The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment

by Dallas G. Denery II

  Left with few good options, many individuals sought to hide in plain sight. At the very beginning of the first chapter of his treatise On Honest Dissimulation, for example, Torquato Accetto, a seventeenth-century secretary to the rulers of Andria in Southern Italy, recalls Adam and Eve’s predicament during that fatal moment in the Garden. “From the instant the first man opened his eyes and realized he was naked,” Accetto writes, “he was concerned to hide himself from the view of his Creator, thus the effort to conceal was born with the world itself and the appearance of the first fault.” Adam’s concerns are still our own, Accetto adds, and there are many people who now try to hide themselves “by means of dissimulation.”118 Accetto, about whom almost nothing is known, who published his book in Naples in 1641 to no critical notice whatsoever, counts himself among the dissimulators. The secretary, who for all intents and purposes remained invisible until his work was rediscovered in the early twentieth century, could not have intended a more fitting historical and literary legacy. The dissimulator, aware of the dangers and lies that surround him, endeavors to slip from view, to vanish even as he interacts with those around him. Dissimulation, Accetto notes at one point in his brief treatise, is a “trade that consists in not revealing things as they are.” To accomplish this a person must set up “a veil made of honest shadows and violent courtesies” to deflect unwanted attention and to conceal himself from prying and intrusive inquiries until the time is right to respond to them. Nature behaves no differently, Accetto adds, obscuring things at night that it illuminates during the day.119

  Accetto steps back from openly claiming to endorse dishonesty, arguing that it is “never licit to abandon the truth.” Drawing on a standard distinction, he contrasts dissimulation with its evil doppelganger, simulation. “One simulates what is not,” Accetto explains, and “one dissimulates what is.”120 This was as much a truism as any other in the early modern period, and even before. Thomas Aquinas had invoked it in the thirteenth century to explain how concealing what is true differs from pretending something false, and biblical exegetes had long found it useful as a way to distinguish the Devil’s simulating serpentine disguise in the Garden from Christ’s dissimulating decision to conceal his divinity within a human body.121 Just like these earlier usages, Accetto’s own examples suggest that dissimulation always maintains an uneasy relationship with the morally questionable activity of simulation, of pretending to be something you are not, of deceiving, lying. He asks his readers to consider a scene from the first book of Virgil’s Aeneid. A savage storm has destroyed all but seven Trojan ships, which now limp into a natural harbor on the Libyan coast. Aeneas speaks to his men, hoping to rally their sagging spirits. Virgil writes, “His face feigned hope, but his heart hid a profound sadness.” Aeneas conceals and dissimulates his misery with a show of hope, but the show inevitably requires pretending to be something one is not. “This verse,” Accetto explains, “contains the simulation of hope and the dissimulation of sadness.” It is impossible, it would seem, to dissimulate something without simulating something else in its place, to conceal one thing without pretending another. These two practices become yet more intertwined in Accetto’s second example, this time taken from late in Homer’s Odyssey, when Ulysses, disguised beneath rags and pretending to be the great grandson of King Midas, speaks with his unsuspecting wife Penelope, reducing her to tears with an elaborate and fictitious story about her long-lost husband. Accetto quotes Homer: “Ulysses contemplated his wife’s misery; but without a flutter of his lids, his eyes seemed like horn or iron; for his ruse to work, it was necessary that he hide his own tears.”122 Accetto marvels over the prudence with which Ulysses places a check on his own tears at the very moment they need to be hid, but Accetto pretends to be something he is not as well.

  Accetto simulates throughout his treatise. He confesses as much in the prefatory letter when he writes, “A year ago this treatise was three times as large as the one you see today, and many people know this; but if I had wanted to delay still more before handing it over to the printer, it would have been in a way reduced to nothing due to the many wounds which destroyed, rather than enriched it.” Those who remember the original text, he adds, will all to easily recognize the “scars” that mark the places where he has amputated parts of his treatise.123 Of course, it was the nurse Eurycleia who recognized Ulysses under his disguise of rags when she noticed his childhood scar, and Accetto’s recounting of Ulysses’s meeting with Penelope bears its own scars, excising the very line that describes Homer’s assessment of the kind of words that make up Ulysses’s tear-inducing story: “He made all these lies sound so convincing.”124 Ulysses’s prudence puts over the lie, and without the lie the prudent restraint of tears would have been for nothing. The slippage from dissimulation to simulation appears again in Accetto’s treatise when he contrasts the two practices. He would have happily examined the art of simulation, explaining fully the art of pretending in those cases where it seems to be necessary, but he opts not to, not because it is sinful and tantamount to lying, but merely because “it has a reputation so horrible, that I judged it best to abstain from such a discussion, although there are any number of people who say, ‘That person does not know how to live, who does not know how to pretend.’ ”125

  If Accetto preferred to conceal the potentially mendacious nature of the practices he found necessary to live a safe and happy life, Guazzo’s characters freely admit them, offering advice that has much in common with Christine’s advice to her female readers. Surrounded by flatterers and liars, identified or not, Anniball argues that we must conceal our knowledge and suspicions for fear that acting otherwise will make things worse for us. Even if it “goes against your conscience to keep them company,” he states, do not call them out if their reputation at court is good. The court judges people on their appearances, and to condemn an apparently reputable person will appear rude, utterly uncalled for, and deserving of “public censure.”126 Returning to this predicament a few pages later, he observes that “without doubt that man is mistaken, who thinks he may lawfully despise or ridicule any, besides those that are notedly scandalous and who therefore deserve it.”127 Given the constraints of courtly life, Anniball counsels a practice of strategic feigning in which we “salute those, who, we imagine are our Enemies.” Invoking a variety of military metaphors to justify these deceptions, as had John of Salisbury before him, he compares this tactical dissembling to fencers who pretend to aim at the head in order to wound the leg or to the “Generals of armies who deceive the enemy, when, by making a feint of attacking one way, they fall upon them another.” There is nothing wrong with this sort of mendacity, he argues, and then rather suddenly adds, and “not only among enemies, but among friends and acquaintances, colourable dealings are tolerable, when they are not prejudicial in their consequences.” This is why, for example, it is perfectly acceptable to lie to a friend in order to avoid his invitation to attend a play in which you have little interest.128 Although Anniball condemns liars as “impudent and shameless,” as so many had and would continue to do, he carefully qualifies his disdain. “I readily own, that on some particular occasions, a lie may be necessary, and even commendable, if it be for some honest purpose.”129 As his own examples demonstrate, honest purposes need hardly be important ones.

  If Walker’s condemnation of lies and liars at first seems more robust than that of Guazzo’s characters by the time he finishes with his own qualifications, there is little difference between the two authors. The truth, Walker asserts, is the “beginning of Heroical virtue,” whereas lies are as unreasonable and ugly “as the shadows of the night.” They are squalid and deformed, not to mention “a violation of that tacit universal contract of Mankind implied in all their commerce and intercourses.”130 Without missing a beat, he then admits in true courtly fashion that lies have their time and place. “But I would not be thought over rigid,” he continues, “doubtless we may speak untruths in some cases.” We can lie to children for their be
nefit, as can doctors to their patients. We can commit “pious frauds” on the impious to draw them to the true faith, and we can lie to save lives. Walker justifies these exceptions as consistent with religious virtue. “Charity is better than Truth,” he explains, “and every man is willing to be cozen’d into his own advantage.”131 Christine de Pizan would not have disagreed, and suddenly the exclusive requirement for truth in human affairs, in our commerce and intercourses, appears much less certain. Truth might be a heroic virtue, but too much truth can be a dangerous thing, and ignoring the demands of charity might be even worse. In a fallen world, in the world of the court, deception, duplicity, and dishonesty are natural and naturally useful qualities, perfectly fitted to our benefit and the benefit of others.

  Walker invokes charity to justify his lies, and Guazzo insistently reiterates the need for the courtier to be a good Christian. Still, something other than, something in addition to, religion seems to be at work in their conception of proper courtly behavior, be it honest or dishonest. Walker refers to it as “refinement,” the thing that delights the “greatest part of mankind” and that requires knowing “what is fit to be done, and also what to be avoided, to render our conversation sweet and gracefull.”132 For his part, Guazzo, true to the title of his treatise, calls it “civil conversation,” that is, “an honest, virtuous, and sociable kind of living in the world.”133 French writers in the seventeenth century would convert this notion of courteous behavior into the ideal of the honnête homme. However termed, all these writers believe that the courtier’s actions and words must be “comely and amiable,” and even if they do not “gratify the senses,” at the very least they must not “trouble any of them.”134 Not only must the courtier always imagine himself on display, he must adapt that display, his words and actions, to the expectations of his courtly audience, for only their approval will guarantee that he is refined, civil, and virtuous. Nearly a century later, François duc de La Rochefoucauld would capture this notion of the refined courtier perfectly when he succinctly noted, “To be willing to live continuously under the eyes of gentlemen is to be a gentleman indeed.”135

  While medieval courtiers were no less interested in their appearance and in how people responded to them, the early modern emphasis on refinement reflects a repositioning of the role that deceit plays in society. Both Christine and John contend that exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures, and sometimes for our own good and the good of our family and the state we must lie. To hear Christine tell it, princesses and noblewomen might spend much of their lives in such dire straits, carefully orchestrating a litany of daily hypocrisies to keep their enemies at bay. Be that as it may, princesses and noblewomen are, by any estimation, exceptional figures, so it should not be all that surprising that they spend their lives doing exceptional things. In this respect, early modern writers were no different, fully recognizing the just use of lies to stave off threats to oneself, one’s family, even one’s state. But they recognized something else as well—without lies, society could not exist. La Rochefoucauld captured this insight in his collection of maxims: “Social life would not last long if men were not taken in by each other.”136 While lies might occasionally threaten civil society, they also make it possible.

  Walker, with at least a pretense of reluctance, highlights society’s dependence on lies, large and small, in the opening pages of The Refin’d Courtier. Having ranked the demand for charity above the demand for truth, and thus justifying the occasional lie, he adds, “But this is to be understood warily and practiced with a great deal of sober caution, according to the comedian’s rule, only when truth produces an insufferable mischief; and in that case it is pardonable, not laudable and noble.”137 Of course, the entire point of his handbook is to demonstrate that crass and “unrefined” behavior is the very essence of insufferable mischief. The only way to avoid being insufferable is to adopt the appearance civil society demands, whether honestly or deceptively. For his part, Guazzo suggests the social necessity for deception when William recommends the courtier employ flattery to make his mark in the world. “The world is full of and subsists by flattery, which is more in fashion than peeked beards and large ruffs,” he explains to Anniball. “You see how all persons for the sake of peace, and to avoid contention, and that they may appear agreeable in company, com-port themselves in the best manner they can to other men’s talk and behavior.”138 And, as one example among others, he describes how parents “flatter their children to encourage them in virtue.” While Anniball refuses to let anything good be said about flattery, he accomplishes this through an arbitrary redefinition of terms that does nothing to undermine its social importance. When good intentions accompany our flattery, we do not flatter so much as feign. When we overly praise our children “for some trifling action that is not worth notice,” we cannot be said to flatter because our praise “is a commendable kind of deceit which has a good end in view and that brings advantage to the party deceived.”139 But the good ends achieved can be our own as well, and so it is, Anniball continues, that we can feign friendship with our enemies and respect for our inferiors. Perhaps feigning can really be distinguished from flattery, but it is deceptive nonetheless, occasionally mendacious and, it would seem, absolutely necessary for the success of human society.

  BERNARD MANDEVILLE AND THE WORLD LIES BUILT

  Published first to little notice in 1714, the 1723 revised and expanded edition of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Benefits met with outraged howls of disgust (and sold copies by the thousands). In a letter that appeared in the London Journal on July 27, 1723, addressed to Lord John Carteret, First Earl of Granville, one Theophilus Philo-Brittanus, roiling with impatience and pugilistic brio, writes, “The Jest of it is, my Lord, that these Scribblers would still be thought good moral men. But, when Men make it their Business to mislead and deceive their Neighbours, and that in Matters of Moment, by distorting and disguising Truth, by Misrepresentations and false Insinuations; if such Men are not guilty of Usurpation, while they take upon them the Character of good Moral Men, then ’tis not Immoral, in any Man to be false and deceitful.” While it is bad enough that Mandeville has filled his book with lies, what particularly offends Philo-Brittanus’s sensibilities is that Mandeville lies about lying—lies when he claims that society depends for its very existence on all manner of vice, deception, and flattery. What more need be said, Philo-Brittanus contends, for Mandeville convicts himself of such seditious ideas and, as evidence, he quotes directly from The Fable’s conclusion: “What we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the Grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception … and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoli’d, if not totally dissolv’d.”140

  As always, the Devil is in the details, and if Mandeville’s readers too quickly honed in on words like “evil,” passing over such qualifiers as “what we call,” Mandeville himself could not deny the privileged place he had granted to all manner of lies in the formation and maintenance of human society. Fallen man, he explains, is a pride-filled creature, so supremely arrogant and vain that it is impossible “he should act with any other view but to please himself while he has the use of his organs, and the greatest extravagance of love or despair can have no other center.” Our desires and caprices are limitless, welling up within us continuously and uncontrollably with such force that “all civil commerce would be lost, if by art and prudent dissimulation we had not learned to hide and stifle them.” If we weren’t such able hypocrites, veiling our true intentions behind sociable facades and amicable words, we would be “insufferable to each other.” Of course, self-centered egotists that we are, we wouldn’t worry about being insufferable unless our bad manners and overweening self-regard somehow prevented us from satisfying our desires. Fortunately, Mandeville argues, because such blatant bad behavior so often does backfire on us, we learn to regulate o
ur conduct and disguise our base intentions. This is why the undertaker, even as he gleefully thinks about his fee, maintains a grave expression, and why the dance instructor mimics enthusiasm as he stumbles through lesson after lesson with students, each less talented than the one before.141 Even our most seemingly charitable actions are nothing but shams. “Where is the man,” Mandeville asks, “that has at no time covered his failings, and screened himself with false appearances, or never pretended to act from principles of social virtue and his regards to others, when he knew in his heart that his greatest care had been to oblige himself?”142

  As Mandeville famously put it near the beginning of The Fable of the Bees, “The nearer we search into human nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride.”143 From earliest childhood we are trained to respond to flattery and soon after to use it on others. In order to teach toddlers manners, Mandeville writes, we praise their simplest fumbling acts of courtesy in terms so extravagant they would be considered “abominable lies” by anyone “above the capacity of an infant.” When, a little older, those same children become annoyed that the praise they once so happily sopped up is now poured willy-nilly on their younger siblings’ malformed efforts, we pull them aside. “It is only to please baby,” we explain, assuring them that since they are now adults, we can let them in on the secret. Their vanity sated, the cycle begins again as the older children now join their parents, leading the lying hordes and “rejoicing in the superiority of [their] understanding” over their younger brothers and sisters. We lie to others to get what we want, but when others falsely praise us, we assume their words are true estimates of our noble nature in order to feed our voracious hunger for approbation and love. We should know better, Mandeville contends, but we don’t. “There is no man of what capacity or penetration soever that is wholly proof against the witchcraft of flattery, if artfully performed, and suited to his abilities.”144 The entire world depends on these endless charades and deceptions. “Thus every Part was full of vice,” Mandeville writes in “The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turn’d Honest,” the poem that prefaced his controversial work, “Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.”145 In Mandeville’s story of civilization, when the whole mass turned honest, paradise was undone.