Show STUDENT LIFE compliance with natural laws which are antagonistic to falsehood and error Men mgiy for a time deceive their fellows and perhaps attain a temporary advantage but sooner or later the truth comes forth and in accord with nature’s law of compensation punishment follows We may deceive others but we cannot deceive ourselves and what is more to the purpose we never can deceive nature In the quaint phrase of Lowell : “You’ve gut to get up airly Ef you want to take in God” Our purpose then should be to employ only the truth in all our relations in life as indeed we must do in the pur- suit of knowledge And this should mean something more than a literal observance of the requirements of truth since in many situations the truth is not subserved by literal interpretation and following of the very words of the promise or undertaking Candor is handmaiden to truth and teaches a compliance with the spirit as well as with the letter A man may justly gain a reputation as a liar who never violates the letter of his written or spoken word because he frequently or habitually refuses to recognize the spirit and real meaning After the battle of Cannae a Roman Consul who had been taken prisoner by Hannibal promised that if permitted to go to Rome he would return if not exchanged or ransomed After leaving the Carthaginian camp and going a little ways he went back upon some pretext or other and afterwards when charged with duplicity in failing to return from Rome a prisoner as he had agreed sought to excuse himself by asserting that he had thus complied with his oath The Roman Senate however took another view of his obligation and returned 157 him in chains to Hannibal The story is possibly apocryphal but serves to il- lustrate the high regard for truth entertained at Rome in her better days Another illustration is afforded in the case of Sixtus IV This Pope while at war with the princely house of Colonna besieged the fortress of Marino Having taken captive one of the Colonnas the Pope agreed to restore the prisoner to his family if the city were surrendered This was done and the Pope in pretended compliance with his wrord first slew his victim and then restorerd the corpse to the relatives At the present day there could be but one judgment upon these acts but the middle ages furnish many just such cases In marked contrast with these per- fidious breaches of faith is the act of Conrad a German king in the twelfth The city of Weinsberg havcentury ing been surrendered to Conrad after a siege in accordance with the usages of war of the times all the men within the walls were doomed to die The women however implored Conrad to permit them to take away as much of their household treasures as each could carry on her back To this the king assented and pledged his royal word When the hour appointed for the women to leave the city arrived a long procession of women appeared each carrying her husband on her back The king’s counselors protested but Conrad manfully said “A ' royal word must not be twisted” But we may not stop with our own acts and words A conscientious adherence to truth compels us to also interpret the acts and words of others as they are intended and not to restrict them literally Manifestly it is unfair and unjust to hold a man to the significance of conduct or saying detached from the cir- - |