eir background, and therefore the idea of sin as sin does not enter
into the discussion. His whole argument and his conclusions are an
illustration of the folly of attempting to solve any problem in ethics
without considering the relation to it of God's eternal laws, and of
the eternal principles which are involved in the very conception of
God. Ethics necessarily includes more than social duties, and must be
considered in the light of duty to God as above all.

"The intentional deception of our neighbor," says Rothe, "by saying
what is untrue, is not invariably and unqualifiedly a lie. The
question in this case is essentially one of the purpose.... It is only
in the case where the untruth spoken with intent to deceive is at the
same time an act of unlovingness toward our neighbor, that it is a
violation of truthfulness as already defined, that is, a lie." In
Rothe's view, "there are relations of men to each other in which
[for the time being] avowedly the ethical fellowship does not exist,
although the suspension of this fellowship must, of course, always
be regarded as temporary, and this indeed as a matter of duty for at
least one of the parties. Here there can be no mention of love, and
therefore no more of the want of it." Social duties being in such
cases suspended, and the idea of any special duty toward God not being
in consideration, it is quite proper, as Rothe sees it, for enemies in
war, or in private life, to speak falsely to each other. Such enemies
"naturally have in speech simply a weapon which one may use against
the other.... The duty of speaking the truth cannot even be thought of
as existing between persons so arrayed against each other.... However
they may try to deceive each other, even with the help of speech, they
do not lie."

But Rothe goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such
violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine
the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law
against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for
limited and selected applications,--after the fashion of the American
humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his
men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is
needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also,
in dealing with "children, the sick, the insane, the drunken, the
passionately excited, and the morally weak,"--and that takes in
a large share o