Just compare these conclusions of Dr. Smyth with his own premises.  “Truthfulness ... is an obligation which every man owes to himself.  It is a primal personal obligation....  Truthfulness is the self-consistency of character; falsehood is a breaking up of the moral integrity.”  “The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to mankind.  A lie is not only an affront against the person to whom it is told, but it is an offense against humanity.”  But what of all that?  “There are occasions when the interests of society and the highest motives of Christian love may render it much more preferable to discharge the duty of self-defense through the humanity of a successful falsehood, than by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a pistol-shot.  General benevolence demands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather than the greater, should be inflicted on another.”  Better break up one’s moral integrity, and fail in one’s primal personal obligation to himself,—­better become an enemy of mankind, and commit an offense against humanity,—­than defend one’s self against an outlaw by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a bullet!

Would any one suppose from his premises that Dr. Smyth looked upon personal truthfulness as a minor virtue, and upon falsehood as a lesser vice?  Does he seem in those premises to put veracity below chastity, and falsehood below personal impurity?  Yet is he to be understood as intimating, in this phase of his argument, that unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other vice than falsehood, is to be preferred, in practice, over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against a would-be murderer?[1] The looseness of Dr. Smyth’s logic, as indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which are put forward in excuse for common sins against chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax standard in such matters.  “Some moralists,” says the average young man of the world, “in their extreme regard for personal purity, will not admit that any act of unchastity is necessary, even to protect one’s health, or as an act of love.  But the men of virility and strong feeling will let down occasionally at this point, in spite of the moralists.  Which should be followed,—­the philosophic morality, or the practice of many otherwise decent and very respectable men?”

[Footnote 1:  See Augustine’s words on this point, quoted at p. 100, supra.]

Confounding, as always, a wise and right concealment of truth with actual falsehood, Dr. Smyth says of the duty of a teacher in the matter of imparting truth to a pupil according to the measure of the pupil’s ability to receive it:  “An occasional friendly use of truth as a crash towel may be wholesome; but ordinarily there is a more excellent way.” That is a counting of truth precious, with a vengeance!