by degrees have been fully developed; and both are but variations, explications and applications of the law of trespass.

The conventions of society are known as the rules of good breeding and good manners. They require comity, a proper consideration and respect for the minor rights of each other, a delicate regard for one another's wishes, feelings and peculiarities, a prompt attention to wants, their serviceable anticipation, a complaisant readiness in assistance; this is politeness. In the denser portions of a community there is constant call for its exercise, so that people, even those of otherwise indifferent culture, become by attrition polished, that is, polite; they are civil, and the higher ranks are courteous or courtly in address. To this must be added the special code of social etiquette observed in refined circles, which descends to minutiæ, and is so rigid in its required decorum that an infraction of it is sometimes less readily condoned than vice. All such conventionalities arise from the union or consolidation of interests and responsibilities, and betoken the solidarity of the community.1

§ 125. A prime condition of the wholesomeness of a community is the truthfulness of its members. The obligation to be truthful in both word and deed is clear. Every one has a right to certain services from his fellow-man, and a usually just and sometimes very important claim is for an opinion, judgment, information, direction, advice, sympathy. If these be reserved when due, it is a trespass, a restriction of a rightful liberty to use and profit by them. Still greater

1 "Nicht die Sittlichkeit regiert die Welt, sondern eine verhärtete Form derselben die Sitte. Wie die Welt nun einmal geworden ist, verzeiht sie eher eine Verletzung der Sittlichkeit als eine Verletzung der Sitte. Wohl den Zeiten und den Völkern, in denen Sitte und Sittlichkeit noch Eins ist. Aller Kampf dreht sich darum, den Widerspruch dieser Beiden aufzuheben und die erstarrte Form der Sitte wiederum für die innere Sittlichkeit flüssig zu machen." AUERBACH.

is the trespass, if they be misstated, thereby misinforming and misleading the recipient, for then his trust is violated, his confidence outraged. If the claim be allowed, the expression by word or deed must be true to the thought.1

But the claim is not always just, not always to be allowed. We are not always bound to speak; often it is right and wise to be silent. Nor, if we speak, are we always bound to tell the whole truth; in which case the extent of the reserve is matter for conscientious judgment, having care not to mislead by the partial statement. This right of private reserve is superseded by the courts in the interest of society at large, and the witness required to tell the whole truth without

reserve.

Whether deceit in any form is ever justifiable is a question that has been discussed for centuries, and is still unsettled. On the one hand it is affirmed that deceit is in its very nature irreconcilable with the eternal principles of right and justice; and on the other hand it is asserted that certain emergencies may justify a departure from ordinary rules of conduct, and render deceit not only justifiable but obligatory. This question of the ages is not to be answered in a few words. We must be content here with saying: first, that a lie is never justifiable; secondly, that not every deception is to be accounted a lie, e.g., the myth of Santa Claus; and thirdly, if the definition of a deception be allowed wider scope than the definition of a lie, yet is a deception so rarely right and duty that every one should practice habitual truthfulness, deviating from it with great hesitation, and only when the justification is beyond all question.2

1 See Elements of Psychology, §§ 218, 251. In north China, a request for information is usually introduced by the polite phrase: "May I borrow your light?"

2 See Trumbull's A Lie Never Justifiable; especially ch. vi, which cites many authorities ancient and modern, heathen and Christian, pro and contra. To these add Kant, who, in a tractate Uberein vermeintes Recht aus Men

§ 126. The general obligation to be truthful takes a number of specific forms. Beside this duty in the commonplace talking of familiar intercourse, we place the formal tie of a promise, written, oral, or indirectly implied in mere behavior. The obligation in such case is strengthened by the fact that the promisee, in reliance on the faithfulness of the promiser, may in his life conduct order important matters with reference to the promise, and suffer injury or even disaster should it fail. A promise given under an essential misunderstanding, or, since we cannot accurately forecast the future, in case the duty of its observance is superseded by some higher unforeseen duty with which it is radically inconsistent, is null. This does not endorse the loose aphorism that a bad promise is better broken than kept; for, if its badness work merely the private personal injury of the promiser, unless ruinous in an intolerable extreme, he is not thereby discharged of the obligation. We commend him that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. A promise made under compulsion cannot be claimed by the promisee, yet it measurably binds the promiser because of respect for his word. In no case, however, is a promise obligatory if the fulfillment be criminal, for it can never be duty to commit crime.

A contract or covenant differs from a simple promise in that it implies an exchange of services, and reciprocal obligation.1 It is usually under the protection of special statute, an outcome of the moral element, of that mutual trust which is the basis of social order. Contracts are of endless variety,

schenliebe zu lügen (Auflage R. und S. vii, S. 295) pronounces strongly for the negative. A translation of this tractate is appended to Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 431 sq. Cf. Lotze, Grundzüge, § 45.

1 "A contract is an agreement, upon sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a particular thing.". – BLACKSTONE, Commentaries, etc., bk. ii, p. 442. The Constitution of the United States, Article i, Section 10, forbids any State to enact a "law impairing the obligation of contracts," which clause has given rise to a vast deal of litigation.

and affect nearly every detail of private and public life; and if their binding character were not fully recognized there would be no security in affairs. A deception practiced by either party in making a contract invalidates it; but both parties must abide the consequences of carelessness, thoughtlessness, or stupidity.

Common honesty in trade, and in business dealings generally, is another form of truthfulness. Exchange of services, of goods, and of other forms of property, has the advantage of being estimated numerically in the medium of exchange, money, which gives exactness to the mutual obligation, and sharply expresses its violation. The interests involved in such transactions are so widely interlaced that fraud excites general indignation and reprobation. There is hardly any form of trespass that incurs such deep and lasting disgrace as dishonesty.1

§ 127. The membership of an organized community does not consist in merely so many men, women and children, standing singly as discrete elements coalescing into a concrete body. A strong tendency to such individualism has marked the nineteenth century, in France, in England, and even more positively in the United States. It cries out for

1 It is worth noting that honor and honesty are, etymologically, the same word. Cf. Cicero's usage of honestas. "The advantage to mankind," says Mill," of being able to trust one another, penetrates into every crevice and cranny of human life; the economical is perhaps the smallest part of it, yet even this is incalculable." - Polit. Econ., bk. i, ch. 7, § 5. Says Professor James: "A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the coöperation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is ever attempted." — The Will to Believe, p. 24.

liberty, equality, fraternity, and demands that creed, race, and even sex shall be ignored on the forum, at the polls, and in the schools. Now, while each individual man and woman is a distinguishable member of society, it should be observed, in opposition to individualism, that each is primarily a member of a family whereby he or she is socialized, that the family is properly the organized and organizing unit of society, and that a community consists fundamentally of associated families. This incidentally appears in the fact that the social standing of the individual is in general determined by that of his family, above which it is difficult to rise, and below which one rarely falls. The question, What is he? asks after his vocation; but, Who is he? asks after his family.

A variety of minor organizations are usually formed by voluntary association, which also are integrant members; as, social or literary clubs, and benevolent societies. Beside these are business firms of two or more members, stock companies, coöperative associations, and guilds or trade-unions. Such combinations for more effective achievement are often legally incorporated, and usually have a contract or articles of agreement, or a written organic law or constitution, stating the ends they seek and the means, and defining the functions of members and officers as duties; the variations in duty arising from a specializing of functions so as to constitute an efficient coöperative whole. A special class of subordinate organisms is seen in the schools, which also usually have a formal constitution and laws defining the duties of members, official and unofficial. They are instituted specially to meet the debt due the next generation, are essential to the perpetuity rather than to the maintenance of society, and form a bond, a historical enchainment, between its present and its future.

Each of the foregoing minor organizations is itself a mem