TELLING THE TRUTH.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1103, 17 April 1911, Page 6

TELLING THE TRUTH.

A DIFFICULT TASK, ''J.Q.2."- TO A : FRIENDLY-CRITIC, Dear Friend,—Somo people would say you ought to have refunded mo that twopenco which I paid on' delivery of your unstamped letter. You, very properly, didn't. Instead, you say in your last that you know I shall forgivo you (as indeed I hopo I should, if there wero anything to forgive), and that it is a Tclief to you to think that I had nothing to pay on my rejoinder. I am now saving, another penny by again replying to you in print, and thus, you see, I recover the wholo sum of twopence, and accounts aro square between us. .. .. .. But there is another reason why I am for the second timo letting tho public road what. I write for you. You find fault with what I wrote about "Medicino Men." You almost accuse me of conveying in my letter-article an implication that a certain great poet "deliberate deceiver" and his pootry a sort of quackery. If you took mo in that sense other people must havo done the same, and the explanation that is due to you is due also to them. You remember how I came to use the word "medicine meii," which seems to be the head and front of my offending. I had been talking of the happy effects which good jokes and good poetry had wrought upon body and mind, and i quoted the story of the traveller who, by means of certain performance's with a mirror, a burning glass, and a phial of brandy, induced a party of Red Indians, who would else havo scalped him, to honour Him instead as a groat medicine wan. Whereupon 1 added: "The makers of great jokes and great poetry are tnc meuicino men.whose leats command the uavago awe. of your irieud, 'J.Q.X.'." Now I think it would be just possible to take that sentence ■ precisely as ;I meant it.' What I had in niiiid was not bo much tho' art of the joker or poet as lay own attitude towards him. ; Ever Bilico I was very'young and wrote verses, I have been of tho opinion that I could not write what I should call poetry, and that it was' only "rarely and by a pure ■fluke that I could make a joke. It may he.wrong and foolish'for anybody who has any sort of a brain to assert that there is anything he cannot do with it, but that is not tho question here. Hav-' ing in myself a consciousness that wit and poetry, woro inexplicable achievements possible only to a gifted few, I naturally seemed to feel towards those few such a sentiment as the Redskins felt towards the traveller who gavo what, for them, was ocular demonstration that he carTied them all in his heart, but might, if they injured him,-burn up their'forests and their rivers. I did not mean to say (and I hold that I did not say) that poets and humorists are humbugs. What I moant was that iny feeling towards them was like the- feeling of those Indians towards tho ingenious M. Tissen«t. I regarded them with.a sort of awe, and as this was a spontaneous and unreasoned eentiinent, I think I was not wrong in calling it savage awe. I admit that I used expressions thatmerited rebuke on the score of misleading suggestion, and that you had pause to say, as you did, "If we are to discuss values, let us not get mixed in the names of the coins we refer to." . "It's not such an easy thing: to tell the truth as you think," said "J.J." to his friend the Major. "Lots of men try to and fail. In fact, I'm no.| sure that any man could i tell the truth unless he's had some training in metaphysics and ' theology." I suppose you and I will not adopt that last opinion, except upon tho understanding that metaphysical and theological training may bo had in the free "University of Hard Knocks." But wo shall agree that the habit of truth-telling ' is extyemely difficult ,to acquire, and is one in which a. man may constantly improve. The difficulties are. moral and social, as well'as , intellectual. It was the special' business of a "Cynic," in the old Greek ssnfe (quite different from our modern application of the word), to tell tho. truth. The Stoics wero among the loftiest of moralists, and yet Epictetiig took tho view (as defined by a modern commentator) "that the Cynic is a Stoic with a special and separate vocation, • which all Stoics are by no means called upon to take- up." Ho adjured one who would bo a Cynic to consider to how great an enterprise ho was putting forth his hand. "Thou must utterly give over pursuit, and avoid only tlioso things that aro in the power of thy will; anger is not meet for thee, nor resentment, nor envy, , nor pity... . . And truly the Cynic must be so long-suffering as that he shall seem to the multitude insensate and a stone. . . .Is his assent .ever hasty; or his desire idle; or his pursuit in vain; or his avoidance unsuccessful; or his aim unfulfilled? Doth ho ."ever blame, or cringe, or.envy?" Such, according to Stoic teaching, must ■be the character of one whose profession it was to speak the truth. And Epictetus would have the Cynic able to say: "Behold me, that I have neither country, nor house, nor possessions, nor servants; I sleep on the ground; ;nor is a wife mine, nor children, nor but only earth and heaven, and je tinglo cloak." ! Such y.as to be tho social state—lower ieven than tub-domiciled Diogenes'—of the IStoic who embraced truth-telling for his particular vocation. And'' further :'• "It must be "understood that other men- shelter themselves by walls and houses and by darkness, . . . nnd many other means of concealment havo they. . . . But in place of all these things it behoves the Cynic to shelter 'himself behind his own piety and reverence. . . . For ho must" not seek jto hide aught that ho doetli, else ho is '£one, the Cynic hath perished, tho man Iwho lived under the open sky, the freej man." • This sheer and terrible publicity, which jbut for the principle which inspired it Vould have amounted to indecency, was looked unon as tho needful means of keeping tho Cynic to his task of telling tho truth.

Indeed it is a difficult matter to speak truly, and perhan? ym; expected too much of your friend, J.Q.X.