Concealment which is right in one instance may be wrong in another instance, the difference being in the relations of the two parties in the case.  A man who has lost a leg or an eye may properly conceal from others generally the fact of his loss by any legitimate means of concealment.  His defect is a purely personal matter.  The public has no claim upon him for all the facts in the premises.  He may have an artificial limb or an artificial eye, so constructed as to conceal his loss from the ordinary observer.  There is nothing wrong in this.  It is in the line of man’s primal duty of concealment.  But if a man thus disabled were applying for a life-insurance policy, or were an applicant for re-enlistment in the army, or were seeking employment where bodily wholeness is a requisite, it would be his duty to make known his defect; and the concealment of it from the parties interested would be in the realm of the lie.

So, again, if a man were proposing marriage, or were entering into confidential relations with a partner in business, or were seeking financial aid from a bank, he would have no right to conceal from the party interested many a fact which he could properly conceal from the public.

A man who would be justified in concealing from the general public his mental troubles, or his business embarrassments, or his spiritual perplexities, could not properly conceal the essential facts in the case from his chosen adviser in medicine, or in law, or in matters of religion.  It is a man’s duty to disclose the whole truth to him who has a right to know the whole truth.  It is a man’s right, and it may become his duty, to conceal a measure of the truth from one who is not entitled to know that portion of the truth, so far as he can properly make concealment.  But as a lie is never justifiable, it is never a proper means of concealment; and if concealment be, in any case, a mode of lying, it is as bad as any other form of lying.

But concealment, even when it is of facts that others have no right to know, may cause others to be deceived, and deliberate deceit is one form of a lie.  How, then, can concealment that is sure to result in deception be free from the sin that invariably attaches to a lie in any form, or of any nature whatsoever?

Concealment which is for the purpose of deception, is one thing; concealment which is only for the purpose of concealment, but which is sure to result in deception, is quite another thing.  The one is not justifiable, the other may be.  In the one case it is a man’s purpose to deceive his fellow-man; in the other case it is simply his purpose to conceal what his fellow-man has no right to know, and that fellow-man receives a false impression, or deceives himself, in consequence.