[Footnote 12: Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, II., 234 ff.]

The Arabs are more truthful in their more primitive state than where
they are influenced by "civilization," or by dealings with those from
civilized communities.[1] And the same would seem to be true of the
American Indians.[2] Of the Patagonians it is said: "A lie with them
is held in detestation." [3] "The word of a Hottentot is sacred;" and
the good quality of "a rigid adherence to truth," "he is master of in
an eminent degree."[4] Dr. Livingstone says that lying was known to
be a sin by the East Africans "before they knew aught of Europeans or
their teaching."[5] And Mungo Park says of the Mandingoes, among the
inland Africans, that, while they seem to be thieves by nature,"
one of the first lessons in which the Mandingo women instruct their
children is _the practice of truth_." The only consolation of a mother
whose son had been murdered, "was the reflection that the poor boy, in
the course of his blameless life, _had never told a lie_."[6] Richard
Burton is alone among modern travelers in considering lying natural to
all primitive or savage peoples. Carl Bock, like other travelers,
testifies to the unvarying truthfulness of the Dyaks in Borneo,[7] and
another observant traveler tells of the disgrace that attaches to a lie
in that land, as shown by the "lying heaps" of sticks or stones along
the roadside here and there. "Each heap is in remembrance of some man
who has told a stupendous lie, or failed in carrying out an engagement;
and every passer-by takes a stick or a stone to add to the accumulation,
saying at the time he does it, 'For So-and-so's lying heap.' It goes on
for generations, until they sometimes forget who it was that told the
lie, but, notwithstanding that, they continue throwing the stones."[8]
What a blocking of the paths of civilization there would be if a "lying
heap" were piled up wherever a lie had been told, or a promise had
been broken, by a child of civilization!