An entire stranger has no reputation, but a certain honour
is his due to start with.
3. As there is a right to honour and a right to reputation, so insult
and detraction are sins, not against charity, but against commutative
justice, calling for restitution. (_Ethics_, c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p.
106.) We must tender an apology for an insult, and labour to restore
the good name that our detracting tongue has taken away.
4. Calumny is a double sin, one sin against truth, and another sin,
the heavier of the two, against justice. If the blackening tale be
true, the first sin is absent, but the second is there. The truth of
the story is no justification for our publishing it. Though it is
wrong to lie, it is not always right to blurt out the truth,
especially when we are not asked for it. There are unprofitable
disclosures, unseasonable, harmful, and wrongful. But, it will be
said, does not a man forego his right to reputation by doing the evil
that belies his fair fame? No, his right remains, unless the evil that
he does, either of its own proper working or by the scandal that it
gives, be subversive of social order.
Pages:
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352