hour afterwards he is thinking of something different, even if external influences have intervened. A man thinks himself unconscientious and blameworthy if he notices that he has not thought of a particular portion of his life for a long time. Memory, moreover, is linked with morality, because it is only through memory that repentance is possible. All forgetfulness is in itself immoral. And so reverence is a moral exercise; it is a duty to forget nothing, and for this reason we should reverence the dead. Equally from logical and ethical motives, man tries to carry logic into his past, in order that past and present may become one.
It is with something of a shock that we realise here that we approach the deep connection between logic and ethics, long ago suggested by Socrates and Plato, discovered anew by Kant and Fichte, but lost sight of by living workers.
A creature that cannot grasp the mutual exclusiveness of A and not A has no difficulty in lying; more than that, such a creature has not even any consciousness of lying, being without a standard of truth. Such a creature if endowed with speech will lie without knowing it, without the possibility of knowing it; Veritas norma sui et falsi est. There is nothing more upsetting to a man than to find, when he has discovered a woman in a lie, and has asked her, "Why did you lie about it?" that she simply does not understand the question, but simply looks at him and laughingly tries to soothe him, or bursts into tears.
The subject does not end with the part played by memory. Lying is common enough amongst men. And lies can be told in spite of a full remembrance of the subject which for some purpose some one wishes to be informed about. Indeed, it might almost be said that the only persons who can lie are those who misrepresent facts in spite of a superior knowledge and consciousness of them.
Truth must first be regarded as the real value of logic and ethics before it is correct to speak of deviations from truth for special motives as lies from the moral point of view. Those who have not this high conception should be adjudged as guilty rather of vagueness and exaggeration
