es human nature, may be kept in countenance
by applause and association: the corrupter of virgin innocence sees
himself envied by the men, and at least not detested by the women; the
drunkard may easily unite with beings, devoted like himself to noisy
merriments or silent insensibility, who will celebrate his victories
over the novices of intemperance, boast themselves the companions of his
prowess, and tell with rapture of the multitudes whom unsuccessful
emulation has hurried to the grave; even the robber and the cut-throat
have their followers, who admire their address and intrepidity, their
stratagems of rapine, and their fidelity to the gang.

The liar, and only the liar, is invariably and universally despised,
abandoned, and disowned: he has no domestick consolations, which he can
oppose to the censure of mankind; he can retire to no fraternity, where
his crimes may stand in the place of virtues; but is given up to the
hisses of the multitude, without friend and without apologist. It is the
peculiar condition of falsehood, to be equally detested by the good and
bad: "The devils," says Sir Thomas Brown, "do not tell lies to one
another; for truth is necessary to all societies: nor can the society of
hell subsist without it."

It is natural to expect, that a crime thus generally detested should be
generally avoided; at least, that none should expose himself to unabated
and unpitied infamy, without an adequate temptation; and that to guilt
so easily detected, and so severely punished, an adequate temptation
would not readily be found.

Yet so it is, that in defiance of censure and contempt, truth is
frequently violated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted
circumspection will secure him that mixes with mankind, from being
hourly deceived by men of whom it can scarcely be imagined, that they
mean any injury to him or profit to themselves: even where the subject
of conversation could not have been expected to put the passions in
motion, or to have excited either hope or fear, or zeal or malignity,
sufficient to induce any man to put his reputation in hazard, however
little he might value it, or to overpower the love of truth, however
weak might be its influence.

The casuists have very diligently distinguished lies into their several
classes, according to their various degrees of malignity: but they have,
I think, generally omitted that which is most common, and perhaps, not
least mischievous; which, since