Chapter X — The opinion which asserts that words, by common consent of the human commonwealth, signify nothing, when they are employed to conceal a truth which cannot be manifested without grave harm, is rejected as altogether improbable, and false

I. Although the controversy which we handle concerning lying, and its kindred mental restrictions and equivocal locutions, is most difficult, nonetheless certain things which more recent writers have devised are reckoned by learned men as evidently false. The doctrine of mental restrictions having been condemned, a laxer, and at the same time easier, way of concealing truth was devised. For they assert that the human commonwealth, in certain cases, has taken away from words their signification, as we explained above, ch. 5. Tamburini indicated this doctrine; Fr. La Croix reported it more clearly from Tanner and Stoz, and approved it; and finally Fr. Cattaneo promulgated it more fully, and from the pulpit, and published it in print. This opinion the most learned Giuseppe Agostino Orsi undermined, who published an entire dissertation against Cattaneo's opinion, with exquisite erudition and doctrine, and two other letters against the defenders of the same Cattaneo — of whom one especially, namely the author of the Allegatio, departed further from the truth than Cattaneo himself, as the said Orsi shows in that same work. This opinion of Cattaneo's, then, of Fr. La Croix, of Stoz, and of Tanner, we undertake to demonstrate as evidently false.

II. And first, the falsity of this opinion consists in this: that this law, by which it is asserted that the human commonwealth took away from words their own signification in extreme necessity for concealing truth, was always unknown to both the ancients and the moderns. That it was hidden from the ancients is established from what has already been said. For the Fathers, all of them, treated this controversy concerning the concealment of truth for the protection of life, reputation, and chastity, professedly, especially Augustine; and not one of them mentions this law: unknown, then, to them. To this Cattaneo adds Cardinal Pallavicino among the six cited authors — no one of whom, though cited, gives silence to mention of this law. What is so incredible? What so contrary to common sense? A law promulgated by the entire human commonwealth, which itself also constituted the entire commonwealth — and yet, among all writers of later times, no mention of this law is made, although necessity now presses to name and employ it just as it did before. What? If someone were to say that the entire Venetian commonwealth had asked for a law, established by universal tacit consent, by which it was declared lawful for any citizen constituted in grave necessity to spend counterfeit money in commerce; and yet were at the same time to confess that no one, from its founding, had ever used this law, or mentioned it? Would not the promulgator of such a law show himself supremely ridiculous, and foolish? No less, certainly, fictitious, and plainly chimerical, is that law which Cattaneo fashions as established by the entire human race with tacit consent — since, from the creation of the world down to the five listed writers, not one has mentioned this law. What of this? Is it perhaps that this argument is a negative one? Since writers pass over this law in silence, they do not disapprove it. Certainly they do not disapprove it — since they could not condemn monstrous inventions which were fabricated after so many centuries; but they reject it in the manner in which what really never was can be rejected. Writers of almost every age, both pagan and Christian, taught peoples the manner by which they could conceal truth in extreme events. The Platonists assigned lying; several Christians acceded to the Platonists. At length, the entire Christian commonwealth always condemned lies as unlawful. The more eminent Doctors and governors of that commonwealth left nothing untried, to open a path for concealing truth; and they found nothing else, except silence, or the sacrifice of one's own life. Augustine, and all the Fathers, and Doctors of the Church after him, teach that Rahab ought rather to have met death than to deny that guests were in her house; that the death of a sick man ought to be permitted rather than that one deny his son to be dead; that bodily chastity ought to be lost, which cannot be preserved except by saying, "My husband is present," when he is really absent. One of two things, then, must necessarily be said: either that Augustine himself was ignorant, that all the other later Doctors were ignorant, and the Church was ignorant; or that they were cruel, and inhuman, if they omitted to teach the people the use of the aforesaid law. What need would Augustine have had to publish two whole Books against lying? But I would offend the manifest darkness of truth, if I extended this argumentation further. Let us hasten, then, to other matters.

III. Thus far, then, it has been demonstrated that the aforesaid law is fictitious, and reposed only in the mind of five or six writers, on the grounds that it was always unknown to the whole human race. In the present matter, however, it is shown by most evident reasons that the commonwealth of men could not, even had it wished, take away signification from words, and render them, in serious and common speech, as material sounds, signifying nothing. To demonstrate this more manifestly, I must first premise the principles which the sacred Doctors use, so as to explain the depravity of lying. Augustine, in many places, proves that every lie is, by its own kind, a sin — because words pertain to this, that they betray the internal feelings of the mind. Whenever, then, a man employs words not to communicate what he has in his mind, he perverts the use of words. These are Augustine's own words, ch. 22: "Moreover, every lie must be said to be a sin, for this reason: that man ought to speak what he bears in mind, not only when he himself knows it to be true, but even if, being mistaken or deceived, he thinks it so, whether it be true or supposed, and not true. But everyone who lies speaks against what he feels in his mind, with the will to deceive. And assuredly, words were established for this purpose, not that men might deceive one another by them, but that each might convey to another's knowledge his own thoughts. To use words, then, for deception, and not for that for which they were instituted, is a sin. Nor is a lie, for this reason, to be thought not a sin, because we can sometimes profit someone by lying: for we can also profit by theft, if the poor man to whom it is given feels the advantage, or he from whom it is secretly taken feels no inconvenience. Nor would anyone, for this reason, say that such a theft is not a sin." St. Thomas presents to us, in fewer words, the whole of Augustine's teaching (II-II, q. 110, art. 2): "A lie is an evil according to its kind, being an act falling upon undue matter. For since words are naturally signs of understanding, it is unnatural, and undue, that anyone should signify by his voice what he does not have in mind."

IV. So that this teaching of Augustine's and Thomas's may be perceived more clearly, every equivocation set aside, it must be observed that, when the Angelic Doctor says that words are naturally signs of the conceptions of the mind, he does not exclude, nor deny, that these same words are signs, as they say, at pleasure. For words are signs at pleasure, insofar as it depends on the will of God, or of men, that this rather than that be signified. But it in no way depends on the will of men that these words be signs of the secrets of the heart. Men, at the first institution, could, at their own arbitrary will, endow the same word with one signification rather than another. But they never could, nor can, bring it about that words, whatever signification they enjoy, are not signs representing the conceptions of the mind. Not to say more: that words have this or that signification is a matter of human institution; that they reveal the secrets of the heart, they have by nature. The commonwealth, then, can change the human significations of words; but it cannot take away from them being signs which betray the internal feelings of the mind in common speech. These principles premised, an evident demonstration is formed against the opinion which establishes that words signify nothing, in some grave necessity.

V. Man has from the Author of nature the faculty of speaking, so that, being a discursive being, he might reveal, as they say, the interior conceptions of his mind. But man cannot exercise this faculty, except by the bodily instrument of words — since his nature is composed of spirit and body. The soul, stripped of the body, itself brings forth its own conceptions, as it does in public. Attached to the body, however, it needs its organs. This teaching, besides Augustine, Thomas, and the other Fathers, even Marcus Tullius himself hands down (Oration for Caecina, near the middle), where he declares that words were instituted so as to reveal the will hidden beneath the veil of the body: "For an honorable, familiar, and daily agreement is not observed, if we go hunting for words. We use those which, if they could be understood between us in silence, we would not use — because it is not possible; words have been found, not to hinder us, but..." not to hinder, but so that they might indicate the will."* This principle is subject to no cavil. But it is in no way lawful for the commonwealth of men to deprive any faculty of that end for which nature instituted it, or to prescribe for it an end contrary to that end. Since, then, the end of the faculty of speaking in man is to manifest the secrets of the mind by the means, that is, of words, no will of men can take away from the faculty of speaking the power of manifesting internal secrets, since it has this power from nature. What? Can the entire human commonwealth, in some case, snatch from men the faculty of speaking? Can it take away from this faculty, in some case, the power of betraying internal secrets? Then it cannot take away from words their signification either. For if words did not signify, man could not reveal his conceptions, since without words he cannot reveal them. If, then, the commonwealth cannot deprive man of the faculty of speaking, or of manifesting his internal conceptions, it follows by legitimate inference that neither can words be stripped, in human speech, of their own signification. For words, destitute of their own signification, cannot be signs manifesting the internal feelings of the mind in human speech. These three things, then — namely, that man is endowed with the faculty of speaking, that the end of this faculty is the revelation of the secrets of the heart, and finally that words are given to man by nature, by which he might exercise this faculty of his of speaking, and reveal his own secrets — are so mutually connected that one who governs one does not govern the other. Man can indeed either speak, or keep silent, as seems to him expedient. But, once he has resolved that he wishes to speak, or is compelled to answer, he must, according to the laws of nature, use words which reveal, more or less clearly, his own internal conceptions. Otherwise he would pervert the end pre-established by nature. This can be confirmed by examples. Nature gave man the power of eating, with the end that he preserve his nature. Man can eat, or not eat. But, once he does eat, he cannot eat for any end other than that of preserving his nature. And those who eat for the sake of pleasure and delight alone sin, and pervert nature's end. Just as, then, the commonwealth of men cannot deprive the faculty of eating of this its end, or prescribe for it an end contrary to it — so it cannot deprive human words of their own end, which is to manifest the secrets of the mind, or assign to them an end contrary to it.