Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-18

vows require. And, at the last, when
the pastor adds his strand to the lying
cobweb by absolving a dying witness
who has hidden his knowledge of the
wrong. and taking no honest steps to
force public reparation one feels that
his thread in the evil tangle was spun
from the loom of honest doubt" and
was caught in the snarl, as If by sheer
chance.
AS the plot unwinds, the false ac-
cuser, automatically intrenched behind
a philosophy of palliation akin to some
forms of scientific fatalism, becomes
kind and benevolent In contrast, the
bankrupt, prior victim of the lie, grows
harsh drunken and ethically warped.
The former aids the widow of a man
whom he had browbeaten into silence
before the trial, forgives the "sus-
picion" of his son, and at a banquet
from his acknowledges in honor OF
his "vindication" starts a subscription
for the ife of the man his falsehood
has put behind bars. His "exonera-
tion" revives the waning faith of his
daughter in God. very much as Wan
gems ordeal summons the latent hero
ism of his wife into being. Thus fu-
gitive and isolated good may be said
to have sprung from evil, and this it Is
which CRATES horribly on the ethical
nerves of Mr.. Hall Caine.
false ethics is not one of them. In
Mr.. Gaines furry lest honesty seem
to beget evil and lie benevolence, he
forgets that the stake in this tragic
game of Morse folk as in the larger
game of life, is not the rights of in
dividuals, but the Eternal Right. 1t
is abstract Justice, not the title deeds
to happiness of two wayward men,
which is nulled and vitiated. The lie
not only perverts the moral standards
of false accuser and falsely accused:
it clouds the whole ethical sky with
black; makes virtues of vices and
vices of virtues; warps human nature
itself, so that its normal balance of re-
ward and retribution is overturned, as
by some titanic, malevolent demon.
The entire novel is the most complete
definition of original sin ever penned.
Only truth can produce justice, and
happiness without truth is an idle
thing. Not economic determinism,
geography, nor environment produce
character, but the will to act. That
is the compressed teaching of the Bojer
novel.
1.-THE Power of a Lie" has been
crowned by the French academy, a
fact which to some minds would seem
to forbid criticism of its structural
features. Yet there are times toward
the sardonic climax of it's simple plot
when the reader feels that the author
is not so much debating human trait
to it's harvest of pain and derision as
developing a Syllogism of which ne
has himself prescribed the postulatas
In the later phases of his story he
seems to be playing a game with hu-
man nature, game in which he makes
the rules and acts as a prejudiced UNI
pire. 1t is not incredible that a man
like Norby should justify his cumu-
lative wrong, but that he should ut
terly forget it in those contemplatlve
pauses in which every man comes
face to face with his real self is simply
unthinkable. Here, as elsewhere, the
author notably fails to allow for the
elusive unreason and occult caprice
which govern the actions of men quite
as ruthlessly as any ethical rule Of
three. 1 suspect Mr. Caine would
have found this defect at the root OF
his distrust of the books moral tone,
had he but dug deeply enough.
The authors terse, limpid style, as
faithfully translated by Miss Muir
lends itself only occasionally to quot
able epigram or characterization. The
old inebriate lawyer, who went by the
name of the late future prime min
ister,'" is a quietly ironic fragment Of
portraiture. OF Wangen's overwhelm-
ing consciousness that he meant we'll
the author observes that good faith
is always ready to excuse the blacklist
lies and raise them into the light of
truth" There is a swift shaft at pub
lie men who float about on vague senti
ments, and whose conscience is kept
entirely by relations and friends" OF
such the pastor quantity observes: 'If
a man only has a toothache nowadays