Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

'vmcmiBUS puerisque'
position that it is easy to tell the truth and hard to
tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth is
one ; it has first to be discovered, then justly and
exactly uttered. Even with instruments specially
contrived for such a purpose — with a foot-rule, a
level, or a theodolite — it is not easy to be exact ; it
is easier, alas ! to be inexact. From those who mark
the divisions on a scale to those who measure the
boundaries of empires or the distance of the heavenly
stars, it is by careful method and minute, unweary-
ing attention that men rise even to material exact-
ness or to sure knowledge even of external and
constant things. But it is easier to draw the outline
of a mountain than the changing appearance of a
face ; and truth in human relations is of this more
intangible and dubious order : hard to seize, harder
to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose,
colloquial sense — not to say that I have been in
Malabar when as a matter of fact I was never out
of England, not to say that I have read Cervantes
in the original when as a matter of fact I know not
one syllable of Spanish — this, indeed, is easy and to
the same degree unimportant in itself. Lies of this
sort, according to circumstances, may or may not be
important ; in a certain sense even they may or may
not be false. The habitual liar may be a very
honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and
friends ; while another man, who never told a formal
falsehood in his life, may yet be himself one lie — •
heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the
kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, vice versa,,
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