§ 1. Cunning, craftiness, and like words are customarily taken in either sense. Augustine, Epistle 29: “For, as you know, certain vices are contrary to virtues by an evident distinction, as imprudence is to prudence. But there are certain things which, because they are merely vices, are therefore contrary, yet are similar by a certain deceptive appearance, as not imprudence but cunning is to that same prudence. For now I call that cunning which is more commonly understood and named among the malicious, not as our Scripture is accustomed to speak, which often places cunning in a good sense. Hence: ‘Be cunning as serpents’; and this: ‘That he may give cunning also to the innocent.’ Although among them too the most eloquent man of the Roman tongue said, ‘Yet neither deceit nor cunning for taking precautions was lacking to him,’ placing cunning in a good sense. But among them this is exceedingly rare; among us it is exceedingly frequent.”
Augustine is altogether right. For Cicero, in book 5 of On Duties, calls cunning those whom the Greeks call πανούργους, and places them plainly among vice: “Not open,” he says, “not simple, not ingenuous, not a good man, but crafty, obscure, cunning, deceitful, malicious, sly, practiced in deception, artful.” In the first book he himself explains what cunning he understands: “Injuries also frequently arise through a certain chicanery and an excessively cunning and malicious interpretation of the law. From this, ‘the highest law, the highest injury,’ has now become a proverb worn by speech.” In this kind many sins are also committed in the commonwealth, as by the man who, when a truce for thirty days had been made with the enemy, laid waste the fields at night, because a truce of days, not of nights, had been made.
Nor is our own man indeed to be approved, if it is true that Quintus Fabius Labeo—or whoever else it was, for I possess nothing beyond hearsay—was given by the senate as arbiter to the Nolans and Neapolitans concerning the boundaries of their territory. When he had come to the place, he spoke to each party separately, urging them not to act or seek anything greedily and to prefer retreating to advancing. When both had done this, some land was left in the middle. And so he fixed their boundaries as they themselves had said; what was left in the middle he adjudged to the Roman people. This is indeed to deceive, not to judge. Therefore such cleverness must be avoided in every affair.
§ 2. I therefore define malicious and deceitfully practiced cunning as a habit of mind for deceiving and harming others. The end of prudence is always good; but the ways and means which it chooses for reaching its purpose must also be right, for the wise person does not strive toward his undertaking through crimes. But the cunning or crafty man, whose mind turns and rolls swiftly in conducting affairs, either chooses an evil end, or evil or counterfeit ways to a good end. If he uses a fallacy of words, it is evil deceit; if malice in actions, it is called fraud, although usage in speaking has long since abolished those distinctions. God detests that deceptive cunning: “The Lord will abominate the bloody and deceitful man” (Psalm 5:7); and, “The Lord will destroy all deceitful lips” (Psalm 11:4). But deceitful men are hated not only by God but also by human beings beyond what can be said.
Cicero, book 2 of On Duties: “Of these two, therefore, justice possesses more power for creating confidence, since it has sufficient authority without prudence, while prudence without justice has no power at all to create confidence. For the craftier and more cunning anyone is, the more hated and suspected he is when the reputation for probity has been removed. Therefore intelligence joined to justice will have as much strength as it wishes for creating confidence. Justice without prudence will have much power; prudence without justice will have none.” Who has not detested Cleomenes, a leader notorious for fraud, who perished in prison, killed by the captives with a deserved wound? Lysander, the leader of a magnanimous state, was endowed more with Spartan power than with spirit; he accomplished almost everything by his foxlike devices. Aristomenes the Messenian was the object of the greatest hatred while alive; after his death his heart is said to have been found bristling with hairs. I scarcely believe that those who believe this have a heart, Pliny relates in book 11, chapter 37. After frequently deceiving the Spartans, he was at last killed by them.
The cause of hatred is that no one wishes to be deceived: people prefer that a thing be openly denied them rather than that hope be deferred and mocked by fraud and flattering words. But a greater evil is that malice of nature, once exposed, utterly abolishes all confidence thereafter, as I taught in book 2. But princes and magistrates in whom no confidence is placed are without protection, although they possess kingdoms, resources, and armies.
Pericles acted shrewdly but maliciously. For when he had sworn that he would spare his enemies if they put down their iron, he killed those who had iron clasps upon their military cloaks. The cunning of the Calvinist Church setting out for Florida was no different—indeed, it was more cruel; their history relates the affair. In the year 1556 a French fleet was going to Brazil. It carried thirteen ministers who were to serve the Brazilians; all were inflamed to transport the Reformed Church. They drove off much plunder. On the voyage they took a Portuguese light vessel through surrender, yet promised the Portuguese that, if he quickly found and brought another light vessel, the one they had seized would be returned. The Portuguese, released with an armed force, came upon another Liburnian vessel, captured it, and brought it to that holy Church. The matter greatly pleased our centurions, says the historian, for the vessel was excellent and full of white salt; as they had decreed, they brought it to Villegagnon in Brazil. But in keeping faith with the Portuguese concerning the restoration of the light vessel, they showed themselves so cruel that, after Spaniards and Portuguese had been thrown together into one and the same vessel, not even a morsel of sailors’ bread was left to them; the sails were deliberately torn, and even the skiff, without which they could not reach land, was taken away. They would have seemed to have adopted a gentler counsel if they had sunk the wretched men than if they released them thus; for unless a skiff from somewhere else came to the aid of those in distress, it is certain that they perished at last either by shipwreck or by hunger.
§ 3. The Romans indeed believed that the gods delighted in deceit. Valerius, book 7, chapter 3: “When Servius Tullius was reigning, a cow of exceptional size and extraordinary form was born to a certain head of a household in Sabine territory. The most trustworthy interpreters of oracles answered that it had been produced by the immortal gods for this purpose: that the fatherland of whoever sacrificed it to Diana on the Aventine would obtain command of the entire world. Its master, joyful at this, drove the ox to Rome with the greatest haste and placed it before Diana’s altar on the Aventine, intending by the sacrifice to give the Sabines dominion over the human race. When the priest of the temple had been made more certain concerning the matter, he instilled a religious scruple into the stranger, so that he should not slaughter the victim before he had washed himself in the water of the nearest river. And while he sought the channel of the Tiber, the priest himself sacrificed the cow and, by a pious theft of the sacrifice, rendered our city the mistress of so many states and so many nations.”
This too was foul malice amid error, and he sacrificed fraud to the demon no less than the ox. But when I censure cunning, I do not mean that which has a good and right end proposed and does not employ evil means in pursuing it;
for I relegate that honorable cunning to stratagems. David feigns madness in danger of death; Solomon in judgment at first sight displays cruelty; Marcus Volusius, a proscribed aedile, deceived the triumvirs in the garb of a beggar and arrived safely in the camp of Brutus. “Somewhat more splendid,” says Valerius, “was the aid of last resort in the same kind of case employed by Sentius Saturninus Vetulio. When he heard that his name had been posted among those proscribed by the triumvirs, he immediately assumed the insignia of the praetorship. With men suborned to precede him in the manner of lictors, attendants, and public slaves, he commandeered vehicles, occupied lodgings, removed those in his path, and by so audacious an assumption of command poured the thickest darkness upon enemy eyes in the greatest daylight. Likewise, when he came to Puteoli, just as though he were conducting public business, he seized ships with the greatest license and made his way to Sicily, then the surest refuge of the proscribed.”
Anaximenes freed his fatherland Lampsacus by an ingenious and praiseworthy craftiness. For when Alexander was advancing with the greatest zeal toward its destruction and saw Anaximenes, his tutor, coming out beyond the walls, because it was evident that he would oppose his own entreaties to the king’s anger, Alexander swore that he would not do what he requested. Anaximenes then said, “I ask that you destroy Lampsacus.” This swiftness of sagacity snatched the town, renowned for its ancient nobility, away from the destruction for which it had been destined.
Such things must often be employed in counsels of peace and war. Others are things that cause harm unjustly or consist in lies, perjuries, and wicked dissimulation; these I wish to be removed utterly from the commonwealth. For no path except the right path leads to the end; to turn reason given by God toward frauds and malice is an outrage.
§ 4. Many nevertheless admit frauds; indeed, they substitute cunning for prudence. We live among evil people, they say; princes themselves
Keep a cunning fox beneath a stale breast.
Kingdoms are overthrown through fraud; why should you not preserve them by the same means? He always performs his duty who takes counsel for the advantage of human beings.
Machiavelli indeed thinks these things openly and wickedly. Others do so more gently, for they make cunning and fraud threefold: light, intermediate, and grave. They counsel the light, tolerate the intermediate, and condemn the grave. Thus Justus Lipsius in book 4 of the Politics.
He calls distrust and dissimulation light fraud; but he describes it in such a way that it seems to contain caution and taciturnity rather than any vice. He forbids princes to believe readily, because they lie open to injury; because offenses against them are committed with less fear and for a greater reward; because confidence is rare in a court—indeed, among so many peoples there is scarcely one faithful person. These, I say, are precepts of virtue, not indulgence toward vices. For nothing is more useful than a wise distrust. Nor is the dissimulation by which one covers one’s mind always vicious. A matter which he can believe only rashly and foolishly is proposed to the senate or to the prince, but he nevertheless has no need to say that he believes none of it. He suppresses his judgment; for why should he carry his mind on his forehead or tongue? Silence is a faithful reward. Yet I do not wish dissimulation to advance farther, to ambiguous and fraudulent utterances, when injury to God and human beings lies there; for then he will be guilty of a graver fraud.
Justus tolerates, but does not counsel, intermediate fraud. In it are conciliation, corruption, and frustration through letters and embassies. But these things too must be distinguished. You shall never draw the subject of another into friendship with you or with your commonwealth by a lie and wicked dissimulation, for God forbids it: “Do not wish to use any lie, for the repeated use of it is never profitable” (Ecclesiasticus 1); and, “Elaborate words do not become a fool, nor a lying lip a prince” (Proverbs 17). He says these things rightly, for he confesses that they are sins, albeit small ones. But if that is so, not only must they not be counseled; they must be dissuaded by every means.
§ 5. What, therefore? Will it not be permissible to preserve a state by one little lie? Do not daily perjuries so often resound without causes, or for ridiculous and often even evil causes? Surely one guilt, and not a great one, will forestall and avert so many crimes that would occur in its destruction. Permit a lighter evil by which you may exclude a graver; tolerate smoke lest you fall into flames.
But the oracle of uncreated wisdom, of creative wisdom, thunders against these fearful voices of human wisdom. The vessel of election, the teacher of the nations, cries aloud that evils must not be done so that goods may come (Romans 3:6): “For if the truth of God has abounded in my lie unto his glory, why am I still judged as a sinner? And why not—just as we are blasphemed and as some say that we say—let us do evils that goods may come? Their condemnation is just.” Therefore no lie belongs to prudence; no prudence lies; every lie belongs to folly, because carnal prudence and malicious cunning are folly before God, before the angels, in the infallible tribunal, according to the eternal sentence.
§ 6. Against all the pseudo-politicians let Augustine alone come forward for me. He too had been nobly engaged in political life and among the dignities of the powerful, and, in accordance with the custom of his own and our time, had told many lies in unbelief; for sins belong not to times but to human beings. He wrote one book On Lying and another Against Lying, from which whoever wishes to read him rather than the teachers of lies will draw the true judgment. For in the book On Lying he proves that none of the eight kinds of lies is lawful, even if it brings about no one’s harm and the advantage of many. Next, a lie must never be told, even to escape any evil whatsoever, since it is written: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.” Third, vain is the excuse of those who lie so that what ought to be detested still more may be avoided.
“But in this,” he says, “human beings err because they subordinate precious things to cheaper ones. For once it has been granted that some evil must be admitted lest another more grave be admitted, each person measures the evil not by the rule of truth but by his own desire and custom; and he thinks that graver which he himself abhors more, not that which truly must be avoided more. This entire vice is begotten from a perversity of love. For since there are two lives of ours—one eternal, which is divinely promised, and the other temporal, in which we now are—when anyone has begun to love this temporal life more than that eternal one, on account of the life which he loves he thinks that all things must be done. Nor does he esteem any sins graver than those which injure this life and either unjustly and unlawfully remove from it something of advantage or, by an inflicted death, take it away entirely. And so they hate thieves, robbers, the insulting, torturers, and killers more than the lascivious, drunken, and luxurious, if these trouble no one. For they do not understand, or do not care at all, that the latter do injury to God—not indeed to any disadvantage of his, but to their own great destruction—when they corrupt his gifts in themselves, even temporal gifts, and through those very corruptions are turned away from eternal gifts.”
He had said a little earlier that one must not lie even for the praise of God. Afterward he adds: “One must not lie with the sixth kind either, for the truth of testimony is not rightly corrupted even for anyone’s temporal advantage and safety. But no one must be led to eternal salvation by the aid of a lie.” And he adds the reason: “For no one must be converted to good morals by the evil morals of those converting him.”
But what of this—is not a little lie praiseworthy for the good of the commonwealth? Augustine answers: “For neither anyone’s temporal advantage nor safety is to be preferred to perfecting faith. And so, although someone offended by right deeds should retreat from virtue, right deeds must not on that account be abandoned.” In the other book, which is written Against Lying, he labors to show that a lie must not be abused either for the peace of the Church or for the conversion of those who err. The Priscillianists thought that their heresy must be concealed not only by denying and lying but even by perjuring themselves; but it seemed to certain Catholics that they ought to pretend to be Priscillianists so that they might penetrate their hiding places. He says that their design is contrary to Paul’s judgment, which forbids doing evils so that goods may come.
Since snares and hunts altogether similar to these entangle the unwary throughout the whole world by means of lies, let us compare their deeds with one another. The end of the Catholics was most honorable: to remove the danger of an obscene heresy from the Church and to draw the heretics out of their hiding places so that they might be converted. Augustine teaches that this must be done piously and truly, not by lying, and proves it by the sacred writings; but he also adduces reasons from the very midst of the nature of things.
§ 7. First, there are many kinds of lies; there is none that is not contrary to truth. Every lie, therefore, is in evil, and injury inflicted upon God is graver than human disadvantages. But since that injury touches few people, let us look at the human disadvantages.
§ 8. Second, while human and foolish wisdom opens a crack for fallacy, from small beginnings it builds for itself a broad and open gate. Moreover, so great a blindness has occupied the minds of human beings that it is too little for them if we say that certain lies are not sins, unless in certain cases they also say that it is a sin if we refuse a lie. And in defending lying they have been brought to the point of saying that the Apostle Paul used even that first kind, which is the most criminal of all. He says that the first kind of lie occurs when someone lies in the doctrine of piety.
§ 9. Third, and what is more pitiable, that prudence, as customary as it is harmful, brings it about that confidence is abolished. For what envoy, what orator now trusts—not to say another envoy or orator; not to say the prince to whom or against whom he is sent—but even his own prince, by whom he is sent? For the envoys themselves are often deceived. “And what is more pitiable,” Augustine says, “even those who have now been made, as it were, our own cannot discover how they may trust us. For if they suspect that we speak even the Catholic dogmas themselves deceitfully so that we may conceal some other thing—I know not what—which we think true, you will certainly say to one suspecting such things, ‘I did that then for this reason: that I might capture you.’ But what will you answer when he says: ‘How, then, do I know whether you are doing it even now, lest you be captured by me?’ Or can anyone truly be persuaded that the man who lies in order to capture does not lie in order not to be captured? Do you see where this evil tends: namely, that not only do we rightly seem suspect to them, and they to us, but every brother to every brother? And thus, while the endeavor through lying is that faith may be taught, what is accomplished instead is that no one should be trusted. For if we also speak against God when we lie, what evil so great will be able to be found in any lie that we ought by every means to avoid it as most criminal?”
Look upon obscure words, covered faces, the gentle torments of cups, and trials made through the most intimate friends: you will affirm under oath that through this doctrine confidence has now perished from the world, or certainly lies hidden among a few.
§ 10. Fourth, this excuse does not suffice: I lie not only for the advantage of my own commonwealth but even for the good of my adversaries, so that they may become friends and, by inflicting injury upon us, may not sin more gravely. “This opinion,” St. Augustine says, “dishonors the martyrs; indeed, it abolishes holy martyrdoms altogether. For according to these men the martyrs would act more justly and wisely if they did not confess to their persecutors that they were Christians and did not make them murderers by their confession, but rather, by lying and denying what they were, both preserved for themselves the advantage of the flesh and the purpose of the heart, and did not permit their persecutors to fulfill the crime conceived in their minds. For those men were not their neighbors in the Christian faith, so that they should have been obliged to speak to them with their mouth the truth which they spoke in their heart; rather, they were moreover enemies of truth itself.
“For if Jehu, whom among others they seem prudently to regard as an example of lying, lied that he was a servant of Baal so that he might kill his servants, how much more justly, according to their perversity, would Christ’s servants in time of persecution have lied that they were servants of demons, lest the servants of demons kill the servants of Christ; and would they have sacrificed to idols lest human beings be killed, if Jehu sacrificed to Baal so that he might kill human beings? For according to the excellent doctrine of the lie-speakers, what would harm them if they pretended to worship the devil in the body when the worship of God was preserved in the heart? But the true martyrs, the holy martyrs, did not so understand the Apostle. For they saw and held what is written: ‘With the heart belief is made unto justice; with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’; and, ‘In their mouth no lie has been found.’ And thus they went blameless to the place where they will not guard against being tempted further by liars, because in their heavenly assemblies they will no longer have liars either as strangers or as neighbors.”
The reasoning is weighty: so many thousands could have freed themselves from the gravest torments and death, and others from crimes, by one little lie; and nevertheless they preferred to hold to truth through so many torments. What reasoning, therefore, compels you to lie in little temporal affairs, and indeed to those who will not believe?
§ 11. Fifth, if one must lie so that we may lead human beings to praise God, we teach not only the speaking of true things but also lying. If, therefore, we refer this to the commonwealth and profess the art of lying as honorable, I think we shall state no reason why we should not be attacked with our own arts, and accomplish this: that, by our own desert, all others who can do so lead us into fraud. But if lies are lawful and without harm because they are opportune for the advantages of the commonwealth, in that manner adulteries too will be chaste, thefts just, homicides blameless, and poisons permitted. Histories disclose human crimes to us. There have been those who slaughtered flocks of illustrious men as though they were victims for their own security. There have been those who pursued adulteries with matrons—not so much from lust, although they were most impure, as from a zeal for prying into the secrets of their husbands.
For he who has once admitted into government sins as though either necessary or useful, because small guilt is well counterbalanced by enormous advantages to public affairs, is not far from refusing no crime which he judges conducive to what they call reason of state. They make use of the offense of a small fraud:
“What if you utter a little word for the public safety otherwise than you think—have you sinned?” Will not that man also say: “What if I also add an oath to a useful and salutary lie? What difference does it make that I lie with God as witness, if I lie in his sight? How great a sin is there in one little soul, if for the common good it is dismissed from its little body? How great an evil is there in one embrace, that it should not be permissible to preserve life and the state even through pleasures?” Tiberius killed many because he knew that they had perceived his mind. Others did many things by which they showed this: that they fled no crime which offered advantage and pleasure. For this opinion not only presents small offenses as almost nothing but also, in comparison with public safety, preserving a kingdom, or conquering an enemy, defends great crimes as though pardonable and prudently admitted.
Zopyrus, the servant of Darius and an example of wicked compliance, when he saw that Babylon was being besieged in vain, fled into the enemy city after his body had been torn with lashes and mutilated—an injury which he himself had inflicted upon himself—and complained that his king had treated him with that cruelty. His wounds created confidence, for no one suspected so effective and so cruel a deceit. No prudent man would have endured those things even if a kingdom were the reward for himself, much less for an impious king. He counted lying praiseworthy and built confidence in the lie by means of torments. But this had been too little, for the Babylonians were not ready to believe; and so by a greater crime the lives of many were expended upon his frauds. For he had agreed with the king that, if he were placed in command of the army by the Babylonians, the king should expose soldiers to them when they sallied out, whom by that disorder and fraud he could easily cut down. And thus, by perjury, mutilation of his body, and successful parricides, he most criminally betrayed to a most savage enemy those by whom he had been elected to the highest dignity, and carried about forever the marks of shameful compliance and perfidy.
I use a familiar example which is customarily brought forward to commend fidelity; but here all things are full of perfidy, both in the king and in Zopyrus. It is of more value, indeed, that fidelity be preserved than that Babylon be captured. I shall conclude this argument with a judgment of St. Augustine: “It indeed matters very greatly from what cause, for what end, and with what intention anything is done. But things which are established to be sins must be done under no pretext of a good cause, with no supposedly good end, and with no seemingly good intention.” Augustine, the same man who ought to possess great authority in this important case, proceeds:
“But when the deeds themselves are already sins, such as thefts, debaucheries, blasphemies, or other such things, who is there who says that they are to be done for good causes, so that either they are not sins or, what is more absurd, they are just sins? Who is there who says: ‘So that we may have something to give to the poor, let us commit thefts against the rich; or let us sell false testimonies, especially if innocent men are not thereby injured, but rather guilty men are rescued from judges who would condemn them’? For two goods are accomplished by this sale of a lie: money is obtained from which the needy person may be fed, and the judge is deceived lest a human being be punished.
“If we can, why do we not also suppress true wills and substitute false ones, so that unworthy people who accomplish no good from them may not possess inheritances or legacies, but rather those by whom the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, strangers received, captives redeemed, and churches built? For why should those evils not be done for the sake of these goods, if for the sake of these goods even those things are not evil? Again, if certain impure and wealthy women appear likely to enrich their lovers and debauchers besides, why should a merciful man not undertake those parts and arts and use them for so good a cause, so that he may have something from which to bestow upon the needy? And why should he not listen to the Apostle saying: ‘He who was stealing, let him now steal no more; rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good, so that he may have something from which to give to one who has need’?”
§ 12. Evil, therefore, will not be good, even if it is perpetrated for the cause that there may be something from which good is done. Who would say such things except one who strives to overthrow human affairs and all morals and laws? He sins less who sets a good end before evils—who steals from a rich man so that he may give to a poor man, who sins not from avarice but from pity; but prudence does not rule that corrupt pity—error possesses it.
Will prudence, then, never counsel lying? Not even so that grave sins of others may be avoided? Let them hear the great and holy dictator of politics: “If we open this road to sins, so that we commit lesser ones lest others commit greater, all things will enter and reign over an infinite space, with a broad boundary—indeed, with no boundary, but with all limits torn out and removed. For when it has been determined that one human being must sin less lest another sin more, then surely by our thefts the debaucheries of others will be guarded against, and by debaucheries, incest; and if some impiety is seen that is even worse than incest, it will be said that incest too must be committed by us, if it can be contrived in this manner that the impiety is not committed by others.
“And in each individual kind of sin, thefts for thefts, debaucheries for debaucheries, incests for incests, and sacrileges for sacrileges will be thought necessary—our sins for the sins of others—not only lesser for greater, but even, if the very greatest and worst are reached, fewer for more, if the course of affairs should so turn itself that others will not otherwise abstain from sins unless we sin somewhat less, but nevertheless sin. Thus, whenever an enemy who has power of this kind says, ‘Unless you are criminal, I shall be more criminal,’ or, ‘Unless you commit this crime, I shall do more such things,’ we would seem to ourselves to admit a crime if we wished to abstain from crime. What else is it to judge this wise than to be unwise, or rather to be insane? For I must guard against damnation arising from my own iniquity, not from another’s, whether perpetrated against me or against others. For the soul that has sinned shall itself die.”
§ 13. But human weakness still rises up, brave only in the defense of vices. Augustine himself confesses that he is not yet in the number of those whom compensatory sins do not disturb. Behold, a sick man is in danger from a grave disease, whose strength could no longer bear it if the death of his only and dearest son were announced to him. If he asks you whether the son lives, when you know that he has ended his life, what will you answer? For whatever else you say besides one of three things—“he is dead,” “he lives,” or “I do not know”—he believes nothing other than that the son is dead, because he understands that you are afraid to say it and unwilling to lie. It has the same force even if you remain silent in every way. But of those three, two are false—“he lives” and “I do not know”—and cannot be said by you except by lying. But if you say that one true thing, namely, that he is dead, and the death of the distressed man follows, it will be cried out that he was killed by you. And who could endure human beings exaggerating how great an evil it is for a salutary lie to be avoided and for truth, the murderess, to be loved?
“I am moved vehemently by these objections, but it would be a wonder if wisely too. For when I shall have set before whatever eyes my heart possesses the intelligible beauty of him from whose mouth nothing false proceeds, although where truth grows more and more clear as it radiates, there my palpitating weakness is beaten back, I nevertheless am so inflamed by love of so great a beauty that I despise all human things which call me back from it. But it is much that this affection should persevere to such a degree that the effect may not fail in temptation. Nor, while I contemplate the luminous good in which there are no shadows of lying, am I moved by the fact that, when we are unwilling to lie and human beings die upon hearing the truth, truth is called a murderess. For if an immodest woman demands debauchery and, when you do not consent, dies disturbed by savage love, will chastity too be a murderess?”
What if it should be permissible to preserve a soul by a lie? An infant is held captive. Can I deceive the guards by a lie so that there may be access to him for baptizing him? Augustine denies it, for if they can be deceived by a lie, why can they not also be enticed by debauchery? The conclusion, therefore, is: “Either lies must be guarded against by acting rightly, or they must be confessed by repenting; but, since they abound, they must not be increased by living unhappily and by teaching them.”
These things are Augustine’s, from whom we also learn this: the rationale of those who frequently use lies without harm to another and repent of those committed is far different from that of those who increase lies without measure by teaching them.
I wished to teach most of these things in the words of so great a doctor. For if any theologian, especially a religious, gives these warnings, those deceitful and obscure schemers, compliant with their princes in frauds, immediately object: “Be unconcerned about what those young men from the school or shade say; we do not judge them suitable arbiters of civil discipline. A man not ignorant of the things that occur in this life is required, and the Italian Maculonus must not be condemned so strictly.” For thus they wrest words of a good man, spoken without complete caution, into the worst sense. But let them acknowledge that Augustine neither lacks talent nor is inexperienced in human affairs, and that he is a constant censor of vices.
§ 14. But what is it in which that prudence vaunts itself while the crowds favor it? By my cunning I preserved the city; I resolved intricate affairs; I removed the commonwealth’s fear—how great the utility of one lie! But God did not will it; he prohibited even a useful lie. Will you take better counsel for the commonwealth than God? It is the Lord who, unless he guards the city, the man who guards it lies in vain. But I ascend the tower and proclaim with the voice of God and the voice of nature: the fellowship of the human race is not preserved by sins, but dissipated.
All things depend upon God, upon supreme truth, supreme power, and supreme goodness. Do you judge your little subtleties and little lies necessary for so great a mass of affairs? Unless you teach that one must lie, will human affairs slide backward? O pure deity, O most limpid truth, disperse the wretched clouds of vanity with a ray of true light! In your hand are all the ends of the earth and the hearts of kings; yet these men trust that by their fallacies and frauds they can regulate and administer all things. It is great imprudence to wish, without God and against God, to secure happiness not for one human being alone but for the commonwealth. Do you please yourself so greatly that you think a prince will be happy through your lie?
What, then, shall I do when I must either lie or incur danger? You indeed will do what is not lawful and what I dissuade: you will lie. But you ought rather to incur danger than to lie, because he who forbade you to flee danger by a lie can free you from it; or, if you undergo it, can turn it into greater goods. But if you persist in the purpose of lying, he will cast you into other evils from which you will emerge neither by lying nor by telling the truth. Commit the affair and the waves of your thoughts to omnipotent wisdom, certain that human affairs—even the wills of wicked men, the artifices of courts, and the sly counsels of cities—are so ordered by infinite wisdom that the most provident goodness of God suffices for the common safety, and a cunning in lying within you, contrary to the laws of God, is not required.
§ 15. But to me, considering the affair in human terms, a great part of calamities seems to arise from that deceitful art. First, they conduct the affair not with simplicity, prayer, modesty, contempt of self, hope, and confidence in heavenly aid; rather, they summon troops of fallacies into their breast and, as the more cunning little slaves are accustomed to boast in comedy, place every protection in crafty deceits. And so the outcome of such counsels is generally unhappy: “They enter upon counsel, and not from God”; therefore it is dissipated.
Next, those cunning counsels contend with equal fallacies of the adversaries, wherefore greater distrust, dissimulation, and fraud arise on both sides, as does knowledge of the mutual fraud. “Rome too has its Hannibal,” the Carthaginian used to say, when Fabius recovered Tarentum by the same art by which Hannibal himself had seized it. Third, those who have practiced the art of deceiving for so many years are not faithful counselors to princes or senators to states. By a severe but just vengeance of God, those inventors of frauds have generally paid the penalty to their own prince or fatherland: Themistocles, Pericles, Theramenes, Lysander, Cleomenes, Aristomenes—I omit others, for politicians cannot read here all the deeds or ends of these men. Let them recall what is easiest for them: namely, within these last twenty years, the lamentable falls, disgraces, dishonorable removals from office, poverty, disasters of family, and sometimes prisons and death of men swollen with prudence and of cunning men ruling in courts, assemblies, and public affairs.