of which we are speaking is inviolable, and cannot be destroyed by any case or event, since a man would have to make a new contract every time he opened his mouth to speak. If this obligation were not assumed, the use of speech, particularly descriptive speech, would be eliminated from human life. It would be useless to tell anybody anything, and equally absurd to listen to anyone telling you anything. [I.10.2.i]
The limits of prevarication
[Pufendorf says that “I may shape what I say to express something other than what I have in mind” under certain conditions. Carmichael comments:]
Here the author begins to desert the sound principles which he had established earlier.13 One must be very careful about exceptions of this kind. For although people do not in general have the right to learn our thoughts on any matter whatever, yet a person does have the right not to be deceived by speech or by other signs which he may justifiably believe are being used to express those thoughts. That is, we should not use signs which we judge that the other person will justifiably interpret as intended to signify something to him which is not true, or at least which we do not think to be true. As was said above, we have bound ourselves by a tacit convention to make the signs which we use, on any reasonable interpretation, consonant with our thoughts.14 [I.10.5.i]
[Pufendorf says: “In these cases, therefore, we may make use of a dissembling and specious language. …” Carmichael comments on this principle and some of its applications:]
I am tempted to say that the author uses such language here. In any case if he means speech which by the most reasonable interpretation signifies something different from the sentiment of the speaker, we must apply the well-known and correct rule, Do not do evil that good may result, especially since the universal loss which arises from the weakening of good faith among men, that is, from the relaxation of the common bond of human society, cannot be made up for by any private gain. [I.10.6.i]
In educating children one must often use very crude metaphors. But the effect of speaking untruths is nowhere more pernicious than here. The result often is that children not only learn to disbelieve true lessons, but also acquire a wicked habit of lying. In this matter, they think themselves justified by the authority and example of their teachers. [I.10.9.i]
Nor should we allow that we may tell lies to an enemy. The author himself acknowledges at On the Duty of Man and Citizen, II.16.5, that an enemy is not to be deceived by fraudulent promises or agreements. And we showed above (pp. 87–88) that a sort of tacit convention about using signs properly, appropriate to the occasion and the subject matter, accompanies every use of speech. He therefore who purports to say something to an enemy in all seriousness, while the enemy in his turn listens to him in the belief that he is telling him something in all seriousness, by that very fact contracts as it were the same obligation anew, despite the situation of enmity. It is quite wrong to class false stories with stratagems, since our author himself, following Grotius, specifically recognizes that in the former case a convention takes place, in the latter not. On both, see the references given above on p. 87. [I.10.9.ii]
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