BOOK I. CH. II. PART IV. § 34. Veracity. uttered on one side and heard on the other, and of knowing when they are so adjusted; which however do not concern the present purpose. That which gives to Veracity its peculiar immediate validity, that which makes it felt to be in itself right, as distinct from beneficial, is the same circumstance which constitutes justice just and right, the perceived congruity between the two moments, thought and expression, which are contained in every voluntary utterance. When any person makes a conscious voluntary statement, he is conscious both of the thought before he speaks and of the renewal of this thought in speaking, or associated with his words. If these two images are the same, agree in every point, being only different in point of number or in point of time, the statement is veracious, at least intentionally, and the charm of it, to the speaker, immediate and intense; not dependent on any judgment of others, nor on the perception of benefits resulting from it, nor on the other hand from an "innate idea" that statements ought to be true. 2. Veracity accordingly is a special kind of Truth, and properly distinguished by this title from truth proper, which is the accordance of thought with fact, still to keep to the former threefold distinction. On the philosophical distinction of subjective and objective aspects of the world, we are driven to have recourse to another criterion; and then the distinction between veracity and truth of conception is drawn in this way, that veracity is always immediately and solely dependent on volition at the moment, for you can always speak what you think to be the fact, say you doubt if you doubt, or that you do not know if you do not know; while truth of conception depends on many other circumstances, external to the will, and is only tested and arrived at by repeated examination. Volition is the criterion distinctive of the truth of veracity from the truth of conception. In statements that are not true, the discrepancy between the images in the former kind of truth is produced or permitted by volition, while in the latter kind it is the compulsory discrepancy of ignorance. 3. Although the generic characteristic of veracity is the same as that of justice, yet there are very important differences between them, besides those of entire dependence on volition, and the object-matter being confined to expression and thought, the same circumstances in which veracity differs also from truth. In one sense indeed this confinement to expression and thought is no restriction at all, since these are aspects of the entire world, and thus veracity is universal in its domain. The most important difference between veracity and justice lies in the circumstance that the test of the congruity and incongruity of the two images is, in veracity, contained in the Subject alone, and not, as in the case of justice, applied by controversy between two perThe Subject alone can intuitively and immediately know whether he is veracious or not; others can only infer his veracity or unveracity. Again, the two images are not divided as present and future, expectation and fulfilment, but are both present, and their agreement or disagreement therefore immediately certain. Hence there is no discovery or development of veracity, no making it out in its true form from its first and apparent form, in its agreed upon form from the opposed conceptions of adversaries; but veracity is either attained or not attained sons. VOL. I. R BOOK I. CH. II. PART IV. § 34. Veracity. Book I. CH. II. PART IV. $ 34. Veracity. at once, and once for all. 4. One circumstance connected with veracity re- happen that veracity is in conflict with other forms of justice, or it may be with conduct commanded by the necessities of benevolence or love. That we are not bound to utter what is true merely because we know it, seems to be shown not only by the absence of any such notion from the cases where the congruity of truth is most self-evident, but also by the emotion of shame, which, as already pointed out, prompts us to conceal, pass over in silence, and even forget many kinds of facts and circumstances. But it has often been doubted, whether, if we speak at all, or express fact at all by look, gesture, or even silence, we are not in that case bound, by the immediate validity or right of veracity, to speak precisely what we know and all we know. Yet this is a distinction which is of no avail in many cases. Who, to take an often remarked instance, does not hold Desdemona's lie, "Nobody; I myself," to be an act of the purest and most heroic virtue? The law of veracity therefore is in some cases subordinate to the law of love. Again, there is a wide difference between different instances of departure from veracity. Dissimulation is as much a departure from veracity as simulation; yet it is not always equally culpable. In Walter Savage Landor's Pericles and Aspasia, CC. is this passage: "He plainly told Pericles that he could learn little from him except dissimulation. Even that, replied Pericles, is useful and necessary: it proceeds from self-command. Simulation, on the contrary, is falsehood, and easily acquired by the meanest intellect.'" In naming selfcommand Landor seems to have put his finger upon the circumstance which is most commonly, as well as I think most truly, felt to distinguish culpable from non-culpable departures from veracity. Unveracity is the vice of the weak, veracity the virtue of the strong; not strong relatively to others but in self-command over themselves. And unveracity can only be a virtue when it is commanded by, or involved in, some otherwise virtuous emotion, and enforced in opposition to inclination. § 35. 1. Equity is rightly described in the Eudemian Ethics iv. 8. as ἐπανόρθωμα νομίμου δικαίου. And Aristotle gives several characteristics of it in the Rhetoric i. 13. from which it appears that he included what we call Mercy in equity. The two, however, are capable of a more accurate distinction. Equity may be distinguished with him as the regard for the spirit not the letter of the law, and again for the intention of the person not for the act alone, and again for his general conduct and character and not for the particular act under consideration only. All Book I. CH. II. PART IV. $34. Veracity. $ 35. Equity and Mercy. BOOK I. CH. JI. PART IV. $ 35. Equity and Mercy. this makes equity a more strict justice than can be contained in any law or set of laws; equity added to law and correcting it will exhaust justice and reach its full limits; but in this way equity is not opposed to justice, but is justice itself opposed to law. Law, which is founded on and aims at effectuating justice, will always have equity beyond it, as its ideal, and will be constantly incorporating with itself principles and maxims which before belonged only to equity; as we see has been the case with our English law, where there is a system of equity as strict and defined in its minutiæ as the original or Common law itself, where in fact what once was equity is now law, and has a further equity beyond it yet to reach. 2. But Mercy goes beyond not law only but equity also; it is not however on this account more just than justice, but it is justice of the highest kind. When Aristotle adds the characteristics of remembering past benefits rather than injuries against the opponent, and of being willing to endure injustice at his hands, he speaks of what belongs to mercy rather than to equity. But how is this to be explained; what is mercy; and how can it be said to be justice of the highest kind? It has been shown that there is a justice in three kinds of emotion, in those of sympathy, antipathy, and of the comparison of having. Now equity does not travel beyond the kind of emotion to which the action originally belongs; for instance, if the parties are allies, as buyer and seller, or if they are enemies, or if they are friends. Each relation has its own justice, and the corresponding equity consists in taking all the circumstances of the relationship into account, and exhausting or completing the justice arising out of |