Now this is discouraging somewhat. But there is no good in shutting one's eyes to the fact. That is what I am going against. It is best to know that lies die hard. They will bear at least as many killings as a cat, and that's _nine_. Still, much depends upon the manner of the operation. How is it best performed? Knowledge is needed in all pursuits. There is a science undoubtedly in killing lies. If you wish to go into the business, and I trust most honest men do, you need to study it somewhat. Otherwise you will waste much effort, and get few results. It is not easy to kill one wolf with a stick, but, call science to your aid, and an ounce of strychnine, well administered, will do the business for a pack. Instead of going into a rough-and-tumble fight with some coarse, rude, vile lie, and mauling it to death by sheer force of muscle, it is better to use science and put it to death neatly, cleanly, and delicately, with unsoiled hands. Let us see if we can find the science of killing lies. 'The greater the lie the greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on _nothing_. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is _nothing_, the very definition of nothing. It is what _is not_. So, of course, no pure and simple lie exists. It always builds itself on some truth. It always roots itself into some fact. And there is the secret of its vitality. You batter the lie with your logic, but the blows rebound from the iron truth beneath. You assail it with the flashing darts of your rhetoric, the points fly harmless from the marble reality below. There is truth there somewhere. That is why your rhetoric and your logic fail. That, too, is why one so often sees that most bewildering and despairing sight, men clinging to a lie, honoring it, trusting it, defending it, in all sincerity, against all assailants. It is not the lie they defend, but the truth in the lie. What a relief it was when I first made that discovery! I was ready to think meanly of my kind, to distrust humanity's instincts for truth. The lookout was on despair. But, when I understood the nature of the lie, I learned to think better of my brethren, I learned to have more hope in their Maker. No, there is no building on nothing. Every lie has a substratum of truth. In fact, look closer, and is not a lie only a distorted truth?--a truth torn from its connections, its features twisted out of all symmetry, its outlines battered out of all shape?