corrupts the thing. One of the most comical sights to superior
beings must be to see two human creatures with elaborate speech and
gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable from civility:
the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other should not
accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving offence
by refusal. There is an element of charity in all this too; and it
will be the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and
considerate at the same time. This will be better done by enlarging
our sympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to us,
than by increasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so
that we are able to do more seeming with greater skill and
endurance. Of other false hindrances to pleasure, such as
ostentation and pretences of all kinds, there is neither charity nor
comfort in them. They may be got rid of altogether, and no moaning
made over them. Truth, which is one of the largest creatures, opens
out the way to the heights of enjoyment, as well as to the depths of
self-denial.


It is difficult to think too highly of the merits and delights of
truth; but there is often in men's minds an exaggerated notion of
some bit of truth, which proves a great assistance to falsehood.
For instance, the shame of some particular small falsehood,
exaggeration, or insincerity, becomes a bugbear which scares a man
into a career of false dealing. He has begun making a furrow a
little out of the line, and he ploughs on in it to try and give some
consistency and meaning to it. He wants almost to persuade himself
that it was not wrong, and entirely to hide the wrongness from
others. This is a tribute to the majesty of truth; also to the
world's opinion about truth. It proceeds, too, upon the notion that