ABSTRACT
What is Truth, was an Enquiry many Ages since; and it being that which all Mankind either do, or pretend to search after, it cannot but be worth our while carefully to examine wherein it consists; and so acquaint our selves with the Nature of it, as to observe how the Mind distinguishes it from Falshood. —John Locke1
James Boswell once naively asked Samuel Johnson, “What is poetry?” “Why, Sir,” replied Johnson, “it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.”2 We might say the same thing about forgery: we all know what forgery is, but it is not easy to tell what it is. A large vocabulary of relevant terms seems to promise precision-forgery, fakery, fraud, hoax, counterfeit-but we have no clear ideas attached to most of these words. And here I mean not only which variety of deception is involved-whether something is properly a forgery or a counterfeit, say-but whether something is a deception at all.
