After a little while the rich merchant says, ‘Dear exalted guests, there is nothing better than diligently keeping one’s mouth locked and speaking as little as possible! One must never, and least of all before people of high rank, reveal quite openly what one thinks and feels in the heart, for exalted people have very fine skin that cannot bear the sharp stroke of truth. Therefore it is particularly dangerous to come forward with the truth in the presence of such highest lords! For such lords have something called testing, and one must beware of it more than of snakes, vipers, and basilisks, for there are examples—yes, there are quite curious examples! Let everyone think what they wish, but be a good patriot in their actions, and they will get along well with everyone. Only speak as little as possible, or one could very easily come into most unpleasant contact with the dreadful bailiffs!
‘I have actually already spoken far too much truth! Therefore I now stand firmly by the emperor and say once more: on earth there is nothing higher than the emperor of Rome. Caesarem cum Jove unam esse personam. What a Caesar wills, the deity quietly fulfills!
‘Therefore away with truth from the earth, if there is any truth at all; it is no good for the human race. How much harm truth has already caused, and its teachers have breathed out their spirit of truth either on the cross-stake or under the sword! But whoever had devoted himself to lying has always escaped with a whole skin. At most, here and there, if they lied too stupidly, they had to turn their eyes toward their feet; but little else happened to them, whereas with few exceptions almost all great friends of truth have departed this earth by a violent death.
‘But if such a “reward” follows truth, what donkey or ox will still want to be its friend? Better to keep it locked in one’s own breast like a prisoner and walk freely among people than, by setting it free, become a prisoner oneself in body and soul. For if the body languishes in a dungeon, the soul cannot go walking by itself in a pleasure grove.
‘Nor have I ever heard that truth brought about anything good. A few examples should set the matter in a clearer light for you:
‘A thief has been arrested on strong suspicion and stands before stern judges. If he knows how to lie, he is released for lack of sufficient evidence; but if the donkey speaks the truth, he is chastised with all severity! Then let Beelzebub take the truth!
‘Someone, as happens only too often, has been swindled out of a considerable amount in a transaction by a crafty fellow. The victim, who has many businesses and much wealth anyway, does not notice the fraud and is quite cheerful. But now a friend of truth who had noticed the fraud comes and reveals to the victim how his business associate has cheated him out of such and such an amount. Only from that moment does the victim become unhappy, go to the judge, and spend a great deal to have the swindler punished! Has this truth brought him anything good? No, it has only awakened anger and revenge in him and induced him to spend still more of his wealth! But the truth of the betrayer did not harm the swindler, who knew how to lie, at all, since the lie helped him. Instead it put precisely the betraying friend of truth into prison as a malicious slanderer! Question: what reward did truth pay its friend here again?
‘Therefore away with truth from the earth! It alone is to blame for all human misfortune, as Moses too says in the first book, “As soon as you eat from the tree of knowledge as the tree of manifold truth, then you will also die!” And so it is and remains to this hour. With a lie one reaches the throne, and with truth, prison! A fine present for the friends of truth!
‘So seek truth wherever you please, but leave me alone! Whatever my pantries hold and whatever grows in my gardens is at your disposal, but the sanctuary of my heart belongs to me alone as a gift from Jehovah. To you and all the world I give what I have from the world, and that is the world’s salvation; but God’s salvation I keep for myself alone.’
The high priest says, ‘I openly acknowledge to you that you have judged quite correctly how worldly things actually stand in the world. But since you have spoken of Moses, you will also know that Moses received a law from God for his people, in which lying or false testimony is forbidden and truth alone is made the duty of all people. If all people observed this law, tell me yourself, would it not be glorious to live on earth?
‘I tell you, and you must see it: it is not truth, but lying alone, from which all harm comes among people on earth. This is because, with rare exceptions, people meet one another with a lust for domination and pride. Everyone wants to be more than their neighbor, and so the blind human being reaches for every means that can enable him to present himself to his neighbors in the greatest possible position of advantage and to make the weaker person believe that he is far more and much more excellent than any other human being.
‘This craving for rank then leads people in time into all sorts of vices, even murder and manslaughter, if by other paths of lying and fraud they fail to attain great rank and standing among people!
‘Since, therefore, almost all people want to be better and more excellent than they are, they naturally have no choice but to lie to one another in every direction, continually, as much as possible, and truth has an exceedingly difficult position in the midst of such people!
‘But if people would recognize truth’s infinite advantage over lying—which would be very easily possible if they respected God and His holy laws in actual deed—then they would flee lying more than the plague, and God’s true justice would then punish a liar with death. But because people are all proud and eager to dominate, they love lying and speak in its favor.
‘But as the experience of several thousand years shows, people do not live forever on this earth; rather, they must all die after a short time as to the body, which is finally given to the worms as food. But the soul will then have to stand before God’s judgment. And I ask: how will it stand before God with its highly praised lie?
‘But I think and hold as a living conviction that in this world it is better to come to the cross for truth’s sake than one day to be put to shame before God and hear from Him for eternity the cry, “Depart from Me!”
‘If you have properly understood me and learned from this that we are true friends of truth, then speak the truth, and do not foolishly fear that we shall punish you for it. Tell us openly and truly what you think of us, and particularly of Him who is now speaking with my daughters!’