effective reality; and in fact there is no character that in the general judgment of mankind, and in a special degree to the British feeling, appears more contemptible than the man who, on the appearance of any petty danger, or the prospective emergence of a possible difficulty, forthwith sneaks out of his position, gives the open lie to his own professions, and the cold shoulder to his best friend. So deep-rooted and so wide-spread, so woven into the living fibres of the very heart of things, is the virtue of truth and truthfulness in nature and life, which again, as we have said, is the mere utterance of reason; the necessary utterance consequently of an essentially reasonable being, and not at all the artificial product of a selfish compact {41} or calculation of any kind, as Hobbes and the other advocates of selfism, more or less modified, affirm. We speak the truth therefore, and we are bound to keep our promise, not because experience proves that society could not exist for a single day under the pervading influence of all sorts of falsehood, nor again because it can be proved by a formal induction that to speak the truth, as a general rule, is the best way to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number--though there can be no harm in a man fortifying his virtue by these very true and very philanthropic considerations, if he chooses,--but the root of the matter lies deeper and more near to the heart of the individual man, springing, as we have said, directly out of the essential truthfulness and reasonableness of nature, according to the prime postulate not of the philosophy of Socrates only, but of Plato and Aristotle also, and all the great teachers of practical wisdom amongst the Greeks.