What is Truth? Truth is conformity to fact, in a statement or representation. If I say that London is the largest city in the world, my statement conforms to fact, and is therefore true. If I say that Boston has more inhabitants than New York, my statement does not conform to fact, and therefore is not true. There is one thing more to be considered, which is, that the statement must conform to fact in the sense in which it is meant to be understood. If I say a thing which is literally true, but which is not true in the sense in which I mean it to be understood, then I am guilty of falsehood, because I intend to deceive. The following story will illustrate this. Two boys, who had been studying geography, were walking together one evening, when one of them exclaimed, “How bright the sun shines!” The other boy immediately replied that, as it was evening, the sun did not shine. The first boy insisted that it did shine; whereupon a dispute arose, one of the boys insisting that the sun did shine, the other that it did not. At last, they agreed to leave the point to their father, and accordingly they went to him and stated the case. They both agreed that it was nine o’clock at night; that the stars were glittering in the sky; that the sun had been down for nearly two hours; and yet John, the elder of the boys, maintained that, at that moment, the sun was shining as bright as at noon-day. When his father demanded an explanation, John said that the geography he had just been studying, stated that when it was night here, it was day in China--“and now,” said he, “of course the sun is shining there, though it is night here. I said that the sun shines, and so it does.” To this the father replied as follows: “What you say _now_, John, is true, but still, what you said to James was a falsehood. You knew that he understood you to say that the sun shone _here_--you meant that he should so understand you; you meant to convey a statement to his mind that did not conform to fact, and which was therefore untrue. You had a reservation in your own mind, which you withheld from James. You did not say to him that you restricted your statement to China--that was no part of your assertion. Truth requires us not only to watch over our words, but the ideas we communicate. If we intentionally communicate ideas which are false, then we are guilty of falsehood. Now you said to James that which was untrue, according to the sense in which you knew he would, and in which you intended he should, receive it, and therefore you meant to violate the truth. I must accordingly decide against John, and in favor of James. John was wrong, and James is right. The sun did not shine as John said it did, and as James understood him to say it did.”