But Rothe goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for limited and selected applications,--after the fashion of the American humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also, in dealing with "children, the sick, the insane, the drunken, the passionately excited, and the morally weak,"--and that takes in a large share of the human race. He gives many illustrations of falsehood supposed to be necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to the keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous[1]) and having affirmed the duty of false speaking in these cases, he takes it for granted (in a strange misconception of the moral sense of mankind) that the deceived parties would, if appealed to in their better senses, justify the falsehoods spoken by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the sick-room, and by the clear-headed sober man in his intercourse with the angry or foolish or drunken individual. [Footnote 1: Nitzsch, the most eminent dogmatic theologian among Schleiermacher's immediate disciples, denies the possibility of conceiving of a case where loving consideration for others, or any other dutiful regard for them, will not attain its end otherwise and more truly and nobly than by lying to them, or where "the loving liar or falsifier might not have acted still more lovingly and wisely without any falsification.... The lie told from supposed necessity or to serve another is always, even in the most favorable circumstances, a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and truth, or of a love which is lacking in wisdom."] "Of course," he says, "such a procedure presupposes a certain relation of guardianship, on the part of the one who speaks untruth, over him whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility on the part of the other,--an incapacity to make use of certain truths except to his actual moral injury. And in each case all depends on the accuracy of this assumption." It is appalling to find a man like Rothe announcing a principle like this as operative in social ethics! Every man to decide for himself (taking the responsibility, of course, for his personal decision) whether he is in any sense such a guardian of his fellow-man as shall make it his duty to speak falsely to him in love!