TRUST AND TRUTHFULNESS.
[TO THE EDITOR 07 THZ"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your able article on " Belief " assumes incidentally that "the best way to evoke truthfulness in boys is uniformly to believe them, even when appearances are against them." I take it, this is on the authority of Dr. Arnold ; it hardly has the sanc- tion of Him who said, "0 generation of vipers, who bath warned you," &c., though doubtless the Pharisee could sometimes urge that appearances were against him. There is an order of mind that finds it difficult to study to be natural or to strive to be trustful, and such will think that ignoring the " appearances " is thrusting out of court some of the witnesses. In my opinion, the schoolmaster who pretends that the boy is telling the truth when he has some reason for thinking he is not, is, in the words of Professor Clifford, "father to the liar and the cheat." The people who demand implicit trust when appearances are against them, are not always the same people who extend implicit trust to others when appearances are not against them. This appeal to banish evidence and blindfold reason in the name of goodness is itself a challenge to trustfulness. I can quite conceive that those who commence life as pets, and go on learning to make the worse appear the better reason, have much need of the "principle ;" but unless 1 am much mistaken, the boy who is telling the truth, and is unfortunate enough to have appearances against him, will demand that those appearances shall be interrogated, and my estimate of his intelligence and integrity will depend very much on the way in which he makes and insists on this demand.
But it may be said that what is meant is, that the resultant of the schoolmaster's mind shall be so trustful that, at the first im- pulse, it shall impute truth to the boy, adverse circumstances not- withstanding; and it is contended that this is morally good for the boy,—it evokes truthfulness, is charitable, Christ-like. But im- becile imputation of truth is wilful surrender of intellect, and is not charity, but weakness ; and charity and mental flabbiness are not, as is often supposed, identical. Further, this principle is founded on that false view of Christianity which imputes good- ness to us, instead of helping lie, to be good ; and is immoral, and the more pernicious because it assumes to be so very moral.— [We do not know that we differ substantially from our corre- spondent. The sentence he quotes was not our own, but contained' in a quotation which went rather beyond the true mark.—ED.. Spectator.]
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