[X.]

[Footnote 1:  Steele’s Funeral, or Grief a la Mode, Act III.]

[Footnote 2:  [an] and in first reprint.]

* * * * *

No. 507.  Saturday, October 11, 1712.  Addison.

  ‘Defendit numerus, junctaeque umbone Phalanges.’

  Juv.

There is something very Sublime, tho’ very fanciful, in Plato’s Description of the Supreme Being, That Truth is his Body, and Light his Shadow.  According to this Definition, there is nothing so contradictory to his Nature, as Error and Falshood.  The Platonists have so just a Notion of the Almighty’s Aversion to every thing which is false and erroneous, that they looked upon Truth as no less necessary than Virtue, to qualifie an human Soul for the Enjoyment of a separate State.  For this reason as they recommended Moral Duties to qualifie and season the Will for a future Life, so they prescribed several Contemplations and Sciences to rectifie the Understanding.  Thus Plato has called Mathematical Demonstrations the Catharticks or Purgatives of the Soul, as being the most proper Means to cleanse it from Error, and to give it a Relish of Truth; which is the natural Food and Nourishment of the Understanding, as Virtue is the Perfection and Happiness of the Will.

There are many Authors who have shewn wherein the Malignity of a Lie consists, and set forth in proper Colours, the Heinousness of the Offence.  I shall here consider one Particular Kind of this Crime, which has not been so much spoken to; I mean that abominable Practice of Party-lying.  This Vice is so very predominant among us at present, that a Man is thought of no Principles, who does not propagate a certain System of Lies.  The Coffee-Houses are supported by them, the Press is choaked with them, eminent Authors live upon them.  Our Bottle-Conversation is so infected with them, that a Party-Lie is grown as fashionable an Entertainment, as a lively Catch or a merry Story:  The Truth of it is, half the great Talkers in the Nation would be struck dumb, were this Fountain of Discourse dried up.  There is however one Advantage resulting from this detestable Practice; the very Appearances of Truth are so little regarded, that Lies are at present discharg’d in the Air, and begin to hurt no Body.  When we hear a Party-story from a Stranger, we consider whether he is a Whig or a Tory that relates it, and immediately conclude they are Words of course, in which the honest Gentleman designs to recommend his Zeal, without any Concern for his Veracity.  A Man is looked upon as bereft of common Sense, that gives Credit to the Relations of Party-Writers; [nay] his own Friends shake their Heads at him, and consider him in no other Light than as an officious Tool or a well-meaning Ideot.  When it was formerly the Fashion to husband a Lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary Emergency, it generally did Execution, and was not a little serviceable to the Faction that made use of it; but at present every Man is upon his Guard, the Artifice has been too often repeated to take Effect.