Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1884 — Given to Lying. [ARTICLE]

Given to Lying.

What is the matter with the human race ? What obliquity is it that induces people to tell lies out of which they can get no possible benefit ? Are the majority of people consciously unveracious, or are they really the dupes of their senses? “I said in my wrath all men are liars.” Perhaps he might have said it coolly and with scientific precision. Perhaps it is a question of physiology rather than of morals. The human frame is acknowledged to be a wonderful piece of mechanism. The Psalmist admired it, but it puzzled him. If he had been a scientist he would have been able to give physiological reasons for the opinion that there is not one perfect man—no, not one. Scarcely a perfect woman. It is known that two persons do not see the same thing alike, and consequently they describe it differently. They do not hear the sams statement alike, and they always repeat it with variations. Of all witnesses the eye is the least trustworthy. It appeas to be the most subject to delusions. There is a reason for this. N o two persons have eyes alike. The’two eyes in one head are seldom alike; if they match in color they are different in form, different in focus. Not one eye in ten millions is in a normal, perfect condition. The focus is either behind the retina or in front of it, and the eye is either near-sighted or far-sighted. What can be expected of such an imperfect organ in the way of correct observation ? It appears to be still worse with the ear. It is at best a crooked organ, and nearly everything that passes through it gets a twist. And these *wo defective machines are allied with probably the most deceitful little member that ever was—the tongue, The effect of the tongue to put into sound

j and speech the so-called impressions : obtained through the complicated mechanism of the eve and the ear is a perfect failure. ADy one who is familiar : with a court of justice or neighbori hood talk knows that. And owing to the sympathy of some part of the body with another, the thumb and the fore and middle fingers (which hold the pen) | become infected. The substitution of the inflexible stylographic pen for the flowing quill and the flexible steel it was j thought would tend to remedy tills defect. But this obstacle in the way of writing does not check the tendency to prevaricate any more than stuttering does in the case of the tongue: and it is just as difficult for a stutterer to speak the truth as for a glib-tongued person. | The consequence of this infection of the pen fingers is that what is not strictly true now and then creeps into print. People are beginning to find out this physical defect, and many persons now will not believe what they read in a newspaper any more than if it were told them by an int.mate friend. But they read it and repeat it; and owing to the eye defects before spoken of, they scarcely ever repeat it as it is printed. So we all become involved in a congeries of misrepresentation.— Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper’s Magazine.