Liars, of the non-pathological sort, almost always give themselves away with little details or aside comments that betray their main narrative. I like to think that their unconscious is surfacing this incongruent information as a way of fighting back against a runaway ego. Montaigne assigns the same phenomenon to conscience:
So wondrous is the power of conscience! It makes us betray, accuse and fight against ourselves. In default of an outside testimony it leads us to witness against ourselves: “Lashing us with invisible whips, our soul torments us.” (Juvenal)
Anyone who makes a serious effort to be a decent person probably deals with at least a little self torment over their actions. I have a constant companion on this site in the form of a reader who guides my edits and, in an indirect way, comments on matters by drawing attention to certain essays. Pinging this essay, for example, always makes me wonder if I’ve betrayed trust in some way or done something hurtful.
So, for example, I’ve used the movie “Tootsie” as an example of a story with an ethically questionable hero, given that Michael Dorsey got close to his love interest Julie by pretending throughout to be a woman. Arguably, I suppose, I’m guilty of a lesser form of the same ethical transgression because the person who I assume is the reader is someone who I’ve had both romantic feelings about and acted as her friend.
But whenever I question myself in this manner, I have to remind myself of three things. First, I never put on a dress and a wig and went out on a date with this woman’s father, as Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels did. Second, I told her about the feelings I have for her two years ago, so if there ever was any pretending on my side, it ended quite a long time ago. And, finally, if my reader indeed sends me coded messages via my blog without ever admitting she reads it, isn’t she the one pretending not to be obsessed? I think my various efforts to figure her out are far more understandable if she’s in on the game too, especially because her reasons for doing so remain obscured.
And if she isn’t sending me coded messages and has no idea the blog exists, then what harm has been done? No one else would have any idea what I’m writing about. And this goes for any veiled reference to her in my writing. Ok, so I’ve eased my own guilty conscience, back to Montaigne.
There’s a self torment brought on by our consciences that Montaigne described this way:
The Spanish blister-fly secretes an antidote to its poison, by some mutual antipathy within nature. So too, just when we take pleasure in vice, there is born in our conscience an opposite displeasure, which tortures us, sleeping and waking, with many painful thoughts.
Montaigne brings up something about conscience that’s often overlooked—that it has just as much power to give us courage as it does to strike fear. If we know we acted justly, with the best of intentions, we can accept bad fortune and understand that we didn’t deserve what happened to us.
Conscience can fill us with fear, but she can also fill us with assurance and confidence. And I can say that I have walked more firmly through some dangers by reflecting on the secret knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my designs. “A mind conscious of what we have done conceives within our breast either hope or fear, according to our deeds.” (Ovid)
The essay closes out by taking a left turn onto the matter of torture. And I think Montaigne is against it, but it’s unclear—he finds it inhumane and perhaps ineffective, but he’s unwilling to flat out say that it cannot uncover the truth. I think modern ethics have finally reached the point where we can condemn torture without these mental gymnastics. At least I hope so.
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