Truth Never Dies

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To My Magnificent Agents, Staff, and Friends:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou cans’t not be false to any man ” – Shakespeare’s Hamlet (ll.78-80)

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the leading figures in natural philosophy and in the field of scientific methodology in the period of transition from the Renaissance to the early modern era. As a lawyer, member of Parliament, and Queen’s Counsel, Bacon wrote on questions of law, state and religion, as well as on contemporary politics; but he also published texts in which he speculated on possible conceptions of society, and he pondered questions of ethics even in his works on natural philosophy. One of his more famous essays was, Of Truth, first published in 1625, just a year before he died. In this treatise, Bacon declares that practicing truth and honesty in our everyday endeavors exemplifies “the sovereign good of human nature.”

I find it interesting that such a prolific thinker on so many varied subjects would be writing at the end of his life about truth. Being a man of intelligence, I suspect that Bacon realized that truth is the first and last chapter one finds in the book of wisdom. As we take our first breath, the bright orb of wisdom begins to rise upon us casting its light of understanding across our being. It continues to shine on us throughout our lives, never diminishing until our life journey’s end. But, truth itself does not end. Rather, it is “caught and handed onward by the wise.”

Here is an excerpt from Bacon’s Of Truth followed by an unattributed poem titled “Truth Never Dies”:

Truth, which only judges itself, teaches us that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief in truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of matter or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and then he breathed and inspired light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest said yet excellently well: It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to have one’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the pole of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged even by those that practice it not that clear and round dealing is the honor of one’s nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in a coin of gold or silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth (taints) it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which travels basely upon its belly, and not upon feet. There is no vice that does so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious (dishonest). And therefore Montaigne said prettily, when he inquired as to the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge. Said he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth is as much to say that he is brave toward God and a coward toward men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth.

Truth never dies. The ages come and go.
The mountains wear away, the stars retire.
Destruction lays earth’s mighty cities low;
And empires, states and dynasties expire;
But caught and handed onward by the wise,
Truth never dies.

Though unreceived and scoffed at through the years;
Though made the butt of ridicule and jest;
Though held aloft for mockery and jeers,
Denied by those of transient power possessed,
Insulted by the insolence of lies,
Truth never dies.

It answers not. It does not take offense.
But with a mighty silence bides its time;
As some great cliff that braves the elements
And lifts through all the storms its head sublime;
It ever stands, uplifted by the wise;
And never dies.

As rests the Sphinx amid Egyptian sands;
As looms on high the snowy peak and crest;
As firm and patient as Gibraltar stands,
So truth, unwearied, waits the era blessed
When men shall turn to it with great surprise.
Truth never dies.

In his book Conversations with God (Book 2), author Neale Donald Walsch describes the Five Levels of Truth-Telling: First, you tell the truth to yourself about yourself. Then you tell the truth to yourself about another. At the third level, you tell the truth about yourself to another. Then you tell your truth about another to that other. And finally, you tell the truth to everyone about everything.

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Have an AWE-Full weekend!

Bill