LTINO
470
LYINO
we can see what mistrust, suspicion, and utter want of
confidence in others would be the result of promiscuous
lying, even in those cases where positive mjury is not
inflicted. Moreover, when a habit of untruthfulness
has been contracted, it is practicailv impossible to
restrict its vagaries to matters which are harmless:
interest and habit alike inevitably lead to the violation
of truth to the detriment of others. And so it would
seem that, although injury to others was excluded
from officious and jocose hes by definition, yet in the
concrete there is no sort of lie which is not injurious to
somebody. But if the common teaching of Catholic
theology on this point be admitted, and we grant that
lying is always wrong, it follows that we are never
justified in telling a lie, for we may not do evil that
good may come: the end does not justify the means.
What means, then, have we for protecting secrets and
defending ourselves from the impertinent prying of the
inquisitive? What are we to say when a dying man
asks a question, and we know that if we tell him the
truth it will kill him outright? We must say some-
thing, if his life is to be preserved: he would at once
detect the meaning of silence on our part. The great
difficulty of the question of lying consists in findmg a
satisfactory answer to such questions as these.
St. Augustine held that the naked truth must be told whatever the consequences may be. He directs that in difficult cases silence should be observed if possible. If silence would be equivalent to giving a sick man unwelcome news that would kill him. it is better, he says, that the body of the sick man snould perish rather than the soul of the liar. Besides this one, he puts another case which became classical in the schools. If a man is hid in your house, and his life is sought by murderers, and they come and ask you whether he is in the house, you may say that you know where he is, but will not tell: you may not deny that he is there. The Scholastics, while accepting the teaching of St. Augustine on the absolute and intrinsic malice of a lie, modified his teaching on the point which we are discussing. It is interesting to read what St. Raymund of Pennafort wrote on the subject in his "Summa", published before the middle of the thir- teenth century. He says that most doctors agree with St. Augustine, but that others say that one should tell a lie in such cases. Then he gives his own opinion, speaking with hesitation and under correction. The owner of the house where the man lies concealed, on being asked whether he is there, should as far as pos- sible say nothing. If silence would be equivalent to betrayal of the secret, then he should turn the ques- tion aside by asking another — How should I know? — or something of that sort. Or, says St. Raymund^ he may make use of an expression with a double meanmg, an equivocation, such as: Non est hie, id est, Non comedit hie — or something like that. An infinite num- ber of examples induced him to permit such equivoca- tions, he says. Jacob, Esau, Abraham, Jehu, and the Archangel Raphael made use of them. Or, he adds, you may say sunply that the owner of the house ought to deny that the man is there, and, if his conscience tells him that this is the proper answer to give, then he will not go against his conscience, and so he will not sin. Nor is this direction contrary to what Au- gustine teaches, for if he gives that answer he will not fie, for he will not speak against his mind (" Summa ", Kb.I, "DeMendacio").
The gloss on the chapter, "Ne quis" (causa xxii, q, 2) of the Decretum of Gratian, which reproduces the common teacliing of the schools at the time, adopts the opinion of St. Raymund, with the added reason that it is allowable to deceive an enemy. Lest the doctrine should be unduly extended to cases to which it does not apply, the gloss warns the student that a witness who is bound to speak the naked truth may not use equivocation. When the doctrine of equivo- cation had once been introduced into the schools it
was difficult to keep it within proper bounds. It had ,
been introduced in order to furnish a way of escape
from serious difficulties for those who held that it was
never allowed to tell a lie. The seal of confession and
other secrets had to be preserved, this was a means of
fulfilling those necessary duties without telling a lie.
Some, however, unduly stretched the doctrine. They
taught that a man did not tell a he who denied that he
had done something which in truth he had done, if he
meant that he had not done it in some other way, or
at some other time, than he had done it. A servant,
for example, who had broken a window in his master's
house, on being asked by his master whether he had
broken it, might without lying assert that he had not
done so, if he meant thereby that he had not broken
it last year, or with a hatchet. It has been reckoned
that as many as fifty authors taught this doctrine, and
among them were some of the greatest weight, whose
works are classical. There were of course many others
who rejected such equivocations, and who taught that
they were nothing but lies, as indeed they are. The
German Jesuit, Laymann, who died in the year 1625,
was of this number. He refuted the arguments on
which the false doctrine was based and conclusively
proved the contrary. His adversaries asserted that
such a statement was not a lie, inasmuch as it was not
at variance with the mind of the speaker. Laymann
saw no force in this argument; the man knew that he
had broken the window, and nevertheless he said he
had not done it; there was an evident contradiction
between his assertion and his thought. The words
used meant that he had not done it; there were no
external circumstances of any sort, no use or custom
which permitted of their being understood in any but
the obvious sense. They could only be understood in
that obvious sense, and tnat was their only true mean-
ing. As it was at variance with the knowledge of the
speaker, the statement was a lie. Laymann explains
tnat he did not wish to reject all mental reservations.
Sometimes a statement receives a social meaning
from use and custom, or from the special circumstances
in which a man is placed, or from the mere fact that he
holds a position of trust. When a man bids the ser-
vant say that he is not at home, common use enables
any man of sense to interpret the phrase correctly.
When a prisoner pleads " Not guilty '* in a court of
justice, all concerned understand what is meant. When
a statesman, or a doctor, or a lawyer is asked imperti-
nent questions about what he cannot make known
without a breach of trust, he simply says, " I don't
know", and the assertion is true, it receives the special
meaning from the position of the speaker: " I have no
communicable knowledge on the point." The same
is true of anybody who has secrets to keep, and who is
unwarrantably questioned about them. Prudent men
only speak al>out what they should speak about, and
what they say should be understood with that reserva-
tion. Catholic writers call statements like the fore-
going mental reservations, and they qualify them as
wide mental reservations in order to distinguish them
from strict mental reservations. These latter are
equivocations whose true sense is determined solely by
the mind of the speaker, and by no external circum-
stance or common usage. They were condemned as
lies by the Holy See on 2 March, 1679. Since that
time they have oeen rejected as unlawful by all Cath-
olic writers. It should be observed that when a wide
mental reservation is employed the simple truth is
told, there is no statement at variance witn the mind.
For not merely the words actually used in a statement
mus^ be considered, when we desire to understand its
meaning, and to get at the true mind of the speaker.
Circumstances of place, time, person, and manner
form part of the statement ana external expression* of
the thought. The words, "I am not guilty", derive
the special meaning which they have in the mouth of a
prisoner on his trial from the circumstances in which
