Lies are the most vital
possession of man. Religion lives upon lies, and society maintains
itself upon them, with its train of priests and soldiers--the one,
moreover, as useless as the other. This great Maia of falsehood sustains
all the sky borders in the theatre of life, and, when some fall, it
lifts up others.
If there were a solvent for lies, what surprises would be in store for
us! Nearly everybody who now appears to us to be upright, inflexible,
and to hold his chest high, would be disclosed as a flaccid, weak
person, presenting in reality a sorry spectacle.
Lies are much more stimulating than truth; they are also almost always
more tonic and more healthy. I have come to this conclusion rather late
in life. For utilitarian and practical ends, it is clearly our duty to
cultivate falsehood, arbitrariness, and partial truths. Nevertheless, we
do not do so. Can it be that, unconsciously, we have something of the
heroic in us?
ARCH-EUROPEAN
I am a Basque, if not on all four sides, at least on three and a half.
The remaining half, which is not Basque, is Lombard.
Four of my eight family names are Guipuzcoan, two of them are Navarrese,
one Alavese, and the other Italian. I take it that family names are
indicative of the countries where one's ancestors lived, and I take it
also that there is great potency behind them, that the influence of each
works upon the individual with a duly proportioned intensity.
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