ABSTRACT
To produce the habit of truthfulness should be one of the major aims of moral education. I do not mean truthfulness in speech only, but also in thought; indeed, of the two, the latter seems to me the more important. I prefer a person who lies with full consciousness of what he is doing to a person who first subconsciously deceives himself and then imagines that he is being virtuous and truthful. Indeed, no man who thinks truthfully can believe that it is always wrong to speak untruthfully. Those who hold that a lie is always wrong have to supplement this view by a great deal of casuistry and considerable practice in misleading ambiguities, by means of which they deceive without admitting to themselves that they are lying. Nevertheless, I hold that the occasions when lying is justifiable are few – much fewer than would be inferred from the practice of high-minded men. And almost all the occasions which justify lying are occasions where power is being used tyrannically, or where people are engaged in some harmful activity, such as war; therefore in a good social system they would be even rarer than they are now.
