Lesson 37 - On Telling the Truth
The Victorians, realizing that the greatest happiness accorded to man is that provided by a happy marriage, endeavoured to pretend that all their marriages were happy. We, for our part, admitting the fact that no feat of intelligence and character is so exacting as that required of two people who desire to live permanently together on a basis of amity, are obsessed by the problem of how to render the basic facts of cohabitation simpler and more reasonable, in order that unhappy marriages may less frequently result. The Victorians would have considered it 'painful' or 'unpleasant' were one to point out that only four marriages out of every ten are anything but forced servitudes. We ourselves start from this very assumption and try to build from it a theory of more sensible relations between the sexes. Of all forms of arrant untruthfulness Victorian optimism appears to me to have been the most cowardly and the most damaging.
Truth, therefore, is an attitude of the mind. It is important, if one does not wish to inconvenience and to bore one's friends, not to tell lies. But it is more important not to think lies, or to slide into those mechanical and untruthful habits of thought which are so pleasant and so easy as descents to mental ineptitude. The Victorian habit of mind (which I consider to have been a bad habit of mind) was unduly preoccupied by what was socially and morally convenient. Convenience is, however, in all affairs of life, an execrable test of value. One should have the courage to think uncomfortably, since it is only by rejecting the convenient that one can come to think the truth.
Not, after all, that there is any such thing as truth. At best we can approach to some relative approximation. On the other hand, there is surely such a thing as untruth. One is generally aware when one has said something, or acted in some way which has left on other people an impression not strictly in accordance with the facts. One is generally aware, also, when one has thrust aside an inconvenient thought and slid into its place another thought which is convenient. One's awareness in the former case is in general more acute than in the latter, since we are more on the look-out for the lies we utter than for those we merely think. In fact, however, it is the untruthful thought which is the more vicious of the two. Spoken lies are invariably tiresome and may actually be dishonest. But continuous lying in the mind, a disease to which the Anglo-Saxon is peculiarly exposed, spells the destruction of human thought and character.
HAROLD NICOLSON On Telling The Truth（February, 1930）
维多利亚女王时代的人认为，人生最大的幸福来自美满的婚姻，因而他们都竭力装成他们的婚姻是美满幸福的。就我们而言，我们承认夫妻若欲相敬如宾、白首偕老，必须要在智慧和性格方面下功夫。我们感到困难的问题是，如何使两性同居变得较简单和合理一些，以减少不幸婚姻的发生。如果现在有人指出，目前每10对夫妻中只有4对不是属于强制奴役式的，那么，维多利亚女王时代的人将会为此感到“痛苦”和“不悦”。我们自己就是从上述假定出发并力图根据这一假定创立一种较为明智的两性关系的理论。在所有的十足虚伪的例子中，在我看来，维多利亚女王时代的那种乐观主义是最为脆弱最为有害的。
因此说真话是一种思想品德。如果一个人不想给朋友带来不便的和烦恼，不撒谎是重要的。但更重要的是，不要想着撒谎或者不要滑入到无意识的不诚实的思维习惯中去，虽然这种不诚实的思维习惯极其轻松愉快，毋需动脑就能做到。维多利亚女王时代的思维习惯（我认为这是一种不良的思维习惯），是过份看重于社会和道德方面的便利。然而无论从生活的哪个方面来看，用是否方便来衡量价值，是个极为糟糕的方法。一个人应该有勇气去“困难地”思考，而不是贪图方便而轻松地思考，只有拒绝了便利才能得到真理。
说到底，真话这样的事情是不存在的。充其量我们只能做到大部分是真实的。另一方面，虚假这东西肯定是存在的。一个人说的某句话做的某件事，给人留下的印象是不是完全符合事实，他本人对此情况一般总是心中清楚的。同样，若一个人把不合意的想法丢弃一边而以合意的想法取而代之，他本人一般也是知道的。他对前一种情况的明了程度一般要比对后一种情况清晰得多，因为我们对于自己说出的谎话，总比仅仅是想说的谎话更为警觉。但是事实上，这两者中更为邪恶的是虚伪的想法。撒谎总是令人厌恶的，可能实际上是一种不诚实的行为。但是，在头脑里的不断撒谎（这是盎格鲁-撒克逊人特别易犯的毛病）会导致人们思想和性格的丧失。
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