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faith, and we may shorten our labours by including in a single set of
questions all the causes which lead to misstatement. But for the sake of
clearness it will be well to discuss the questions to be asked in two
separate series.

The questions in the first series will help us to inquire whether we
have any reason to distrust the sincerity of a statement. We ask whether
the author was in any of those situations which normally incline a man
to be insincere. We must ask what these situations are, both as
affecting the general composition of a document, and as affecting each
particular statement. Experience supplies the answer. Every violation of
truth, small or great, is due to a wish on the part of the author to
produce a particular impression upon the reader. Our set of questions
thus reduces to a list of the motives which may, in the general case,
lead an author to violate truth. The following are the most important
cases:--

(1) The author seeks to gain a practical advantage for himself; he
wishes to deceive the reader of the document, in order to persuade him
to an action, or to dissuade him from it; he knowingly gives false
information: we then say the author has an interest in deceiving. This
is the case with most official documents. Even in documents which have
not been composed for a practical purpose, every interested statement
has a chance of being mendacious. In order to determine which statements
are to be suspected, we are to ask what _can_ have been the general aim
of the author in writing the document as a whole; and again, what can
have been his particular purpose in making each of the separate
statements which compose the document. But there are two natural
tendencies to be resisted. The first is, to ask what interest the author
could have _had_ in lying, meaning what interest should _we_ have had in
his place; we must ask instead what interest can he have _thought_ he
had in lying, and we must look for the answer in his tastes and ideals.
The other tendency is to take sole account of the _individual_ interest
of the author; we ought, however, to remember that the author may have
given false information in order to serve a _collective_ interest. This
is one of the difficulties of criticism. An author is a member at one
and the same time of several different groups, a family, a province, a
country, a religious denomination, a political party, a class in
society, whose interests often conflict; we ha