main unexposed. "L'âme comme le corps a ses parures légères; on nous y habitue dès le berceau; on ne guérit pas le mal, on le cache; on ne change pas de caractère, on le déguise. Ainsi la vanité couvre tout; c'ést le paraitre et non l'ètre qui fait l'éducation.* She But no really honest mind will descend to being thus a mere living sham. It will scorn a system, in which character is taken up and laid down, as a ball-dress; it will desire to be, not merely to seem all that is estimable and good, and will shrink from accepting the praise which it is conscious of not deserving. who loves truth, will herself be true, and will feel less disgraced by a fault than by the mean artifice necessary to conceal it. Her own self-respect, the testimony of her own conscience, will be of more value in her eyes than "All the breath that ever came between and she will feel that character has an intrinsic worth which cannot be affected by the praise or the blame of the multitude. We need not point out here the evident incompatibility of moral integrity with the vice of coquetry (we can give it no gentler name), and the dishonest system of match-making, which too generally prevails in this country. We shall mention only the habits of dissimulation and petty artifice, which vanity, combined with other causes, fosters in many female minds to the detriment of their integrity. There are some natures so frank and open that all the little artifices which the love of admiration leads them to adopt, are instantly seen through, and their inborn candour saves them from the evil of habitual dissimulation. We may smile at the transparent veil which serves rather to mark than to conceal, but we should rather sigh. It is the so-called harmless affectation which has a charm in the eyes of men, when practised by a young and pretty woman, because it evinces her desire to please them. But the charm fades with her youth and beauty, while the habit remains to make her middle age ridiculous or contemptible. Deliberate hypocrisy is a vice so gross and so generally odious, that all warning on that score would be superfluous; but, there is a kind of plausibility which is far more common, and scarcely less destructive of genuine virtue and feeling. We know some, and our readers' memory may, perhaps, supply them with other * Aimé Martin, "Education des Mères." examples, whose whole life is a series of petty deceits. Their every word and look has a covert object, and is calculated to produce an effect. Under the veil of disinterestedness, not unfrequently of sanctity, they hide a grovelling worldliness, and with the name of God ever on their lips, the worship of Mammon is in their hearts. They talk much of religion and conscience; but, in their inmost soul, there is no love of God, but a deep fear of the devil; they calculate how much righteousness is necessary to keep them from his grasp, for they know not that he sits triumphant in every soul of man that hates not evil. They are zealous attendants at church and meeting, and their names are first on every public subscription; but the charity, whose right hand knoweth not what the left doeth, is none of theirs-for their benevolence, their religion, no less than their wealth or their talents, are in their eyes, merely capital to be laid out to the greatest advantage. In their hollow and sordid souls no perception of the intrinsic value of truth and goodness, no sense of beauty, no earnest love has ever cast a purifying ray, and were their world of shows and forms suddenly swept away, they have scarce one thought or one feeling which, fixed on higher objects, could survive the wreck. Of these, ever trying to trim their bark between sacrifices required by virtue, and the penalties attendant on vice; these, who without boldness to commit great crimes, hate nothing of evil but its punishment, love nothing of goodness but its rewards; of these, "Che non furnon ribelli Ne fur fedeli a Dio, ma per se foro," we may say in the indignant words of the poet who described them so well "Misericordia e Giustizia gli sdegna; Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa." In speaking of the many departures from strict honesty which take place in the classes that consider themselves placed above all temptation to infringe its laws, we cannot pass over in silence the unscrupulous practices resorted to at elections, or for electioneering purposes, in which women are too often prominent agents. Bribery, in all its forms, is essentially dishonesty, no matter whether it consist in flattery, in exclusive custom given to tradespeople, in charitable donations as a premium to religious profession, or in the grosser forms of money or threats. Unless we at once admit that the end sanctifies the means,-a principle subversive of all in tegrity,we do not see how any of the arts used to bribe or terrify another into a course of action opposed to his conscientious convictions can possibly be justified, and of this, at least, we are certain, that every mind that loves truth better than party, will reject and disdain them. The departures from strict veracity are quite as common as those from strict honesty. Amongst them we may notice, as the most frequent, the inaccuracy which arises from exaggeration. There are many sources of exaggeration; it may be a mere trick caught from the fashions of frivolous society, where matters of real interest being seldom discussed, the expressions of strong feeling or of violent emotion are lavished upon trifles scarce worth an instant's notice; or it may proceed from a deeper source, from a want of sobriety of mind; from the habit of yielding to the first motions of feeling, without any exercise of the judgment to keep due proportion between the words and the occasion which draws them forth. Or far worse, it may arise from that indifference to truth which is but too common, which, though stopping short of deliberate falsehood, is quite careless about all lesser degrees of departure from strict veracity. The habit begins in trifles, but often ends in serious mischief; for the groundless reports which injure the peace and wound the feelings of others, more often begin in exaggeration than in deliberate malice. The old proverb, that "a story never loses by telling," owes its truth to this habit of exaggeration, and unfortunately no reprobation attends it in society. The scruple that would spoil a witty story for the sake of adhering to truth, is laughed at as absurd; and the language which is carefully stripped of exaggeration, and does not lavish epithets of horror or ecstacy, hatred or affection, on each trivial occasion, is thought precise and pedantic. But the fashions of society have nothing to do with the laws of morality; and if we really care for truth, we shall carry it into the lesser as well as the greater actions of life. The constant habit of exaggeration, even when a mere trick of language, is very injurious to the mind, and tends to impair that simplicity of feeling which is a kind of inward truthfulness. From expressing more than we feel, we come too often at length really to feel, or seem to feel, in a manner and with a degree of excitement and violence wholly uncalled for; misleading ourselves, and often overcoming others by the very vehemence of our own words. Such a process often repeated must gradually influence the tone of thought, and impair the power of calm dispassionate reasoning. How much of the false excitement is owing to the mere exaggeration of language, is sometimes clearly and even amusingly proved in society. We see some one grow INACCURACY OF LANGUAGE. 139 more and more excited while relating in vehement terms some trifling mishap that has occurred, but if he is subjected to a certain degree of questioning or examination from others, in the course of which the statement is stripped of its exaggerated colouring, the excitement is seen to subside in proportion. Suppose him, for instance, to have complained, with great vehemence, of being robbed and plundered, of living in the midst of ungrateful villains with whom nothing is safe, he will assuredly check the violence of his emotion, if reduced to explain that the plunder amounts to a few faggots carried off from his woods, or apples stolen by the village children from his orchard. Forced to find more sober terms in which to express himself, that very sobriety of speech represses his former vehemence by making it seem absurd, and from a calmer statement results a calmer view of the subject. It is easily seen from this, how carefully very excitable and imaginative people should be on their guard against exaggeration. It is so often to a certain degree the real and natural tone of their feelings, that they cannot too closely watch, lest it creep into their language or warp their own powers of apprehending truth., Inaccuracy of language is a fault so general as to amount to a serious evil. It is impossible to trust to any report, or even deliberate statement of facts, made in ordinary conversation. In nine cases out of ten, if the statement be sifted, we shall find the mode of expression so loose-the inattention to minor points, which yet have an important bearing on the question, so great-the evidence so vague or so partial-that it is impossible to rely upon it with any certainty. The same looseness and inattention to strict truth, creeps into written as well as oral statements, a fact of which our public press gives us daily proof; so that it is as necessary to examine statements publicly brought forward and averred to be true, as those made in common conversation. One great source of this inaccuracy when unintentional, is the frequent habit of confounding facts with the inferences we have ourselves drawn from the facts, or which we have assented to if drawn by others. We perceive a certain thing, or some incident is mentioned to us; the mind almost instinctively makes some inference which may or may not be just, and the next step too often is, to reason from that hasty inference as if it were a conclusion established by the strictest process of reasoning, and at length to quote this conclusion itself as a fact no less certain than that really observed; whence it follows that all afterreasonings upon the subject will probably be false, being grounded on premises, the truth of which has never been verified. For 140 CONFUSION OF FACTS AND INFERENCES. instance, Mrs. A. is observed to be in frequent low spirits, and a friend infers that the depression is caused by the peculiar faults of some of her family. The person in whose mind these two facts stand henceforth connected, proceeds to speak of them as known cause and effect. "Poor Mrs. A.! her spirits are quite destroyed by the ill-temper or extravagance, &c. &c., of so and so," and thence, possibly, a great number of further inferences are drawn as to the mode or consequences of the misconduct which is producing such sad effects. A whole chapter of gossip is thus fabricated, (and such is the history of all gossip,) and conclusions arrived at and further reasonings carried on, all probably false, since the groundwork of the whole, namely, the connexion between the depression and the defects of another person, remains a mere conjecture. It was remarked by a physician, that he seldom found a patient who, in detailing his case, could make a statement without involving a theory. This proceeds from the same fault of not discriminating between facts and inferences; the two are linked together in the speaker's mind, and without a habit of rigid accuracy, he does not pause to consider which part is true, and which only probable or possible. In the use of epithets, also, a theory or opinion is sometimes involved. Such epithets may come under the head of what Bentham has called, "questionbegging appellatives;" they do not serve to describe a fact or thing, but assume the very points concerning them which were under discussion, or which may tend to bias the judgment of the hearers scrupulous attention to truth would, therefore, forbid their use. The confusion of facts and inferences is still more often made in speaking of the opinions of others, whether our information be gathered from books or conversation. It generally happens, that our own thoughts make a running commentary on whatever we may hear or read; and the impression of reflections so made, frequently remains stronger than that of the actual words or arguments which give rise to them; the danger then is, lest in reverting to them afterwards, we should give our own conclusions instead of the facts or arguments themselves; and so without intentional unfairness, completely falsify the statements we profess to repeat. This may appear too gross an error to fall into, yet upon a little reflection we shall find that it is of daily occurrence. For instance, some one expresses liberal opinions among persons of opposite views; he speaks of popular rights, of the abuses of government, of the evils of certain aristocratic privileges, or of the danger arising from the accumulation of very large properties; these opinions being in the view of his hearers the very watch |