Mistrust

“ Let the wage promised to a friend be fixed; even with your brother smile — and get a witness; for trust and mistrust, alike ruin men.
Do not let a flaunting woman coax and cozen and deceive you: she is after your barn. The man who trusts womankind trusts deceivers. ”

“ But I may claim some indulgence; mistrust, cruel mistrust of one’s self makes one doubt others also. Let us forget all that. Agricola, my generous brother, I will say to you, as you said to me just now, ‘Look at me; you know my countenance cannot lie. ”

“ Our mistrust justifies the deceit of others.’ My opportunities have been favorable for studying various classes of men, and my own experience corroborates the truth of Montaigne’s sagacious remark, ‘Confidence in another man’s virtue is no slight evidence of a man’s own.’ Try to cultivate trust in your fellow creatures, and the bare show of faith will sometimes create worth. ”

“ So foes pursue, and cold allies
Mistrust me, every one:
Let me be false in others' eyes,
If faithful in my own. ”

“ He is in a perpetual state of mistrust; and, in the main, he ought to possess such a character; for, he ought to think nothing impossible, after the extraordinary lessons which he receives from men and from things. In a word, his place commands a continual, and scrutinizing suspicion. ”

“ Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. ”

“ While in their stead are introduced into the ingenuous mind misgivings, a mistrust of its own evidence, dispositions to affect to feel where there can be no real feeling, indecisive judgments, a superstructure of opinions that has no base to support it, and words uttered by rote with the impertinence of a parrot or a mockingbird, yet which may not be listened to with the same indifference, as they cannot be heard without some feeling of moral disapprobation. ”

“ The wrong, if there be any, pertains only to the wrongdoer, nor is the integrity of your relations to the universe affected, but you may gather encouragement from their mistrust. If the friend withhold his favor, yet does greater float gratuitous on the zephyr. ”

“ I have said a long and interesting experience of human affairs, my young friend, and I can tell you where the great mistakes are usually made. They arise generally through mistrust of our fellow creatures. ”

“ Thus it is a positive obligation for a father in regard to his children, and for a master in regard to his servants, whenever there is occasion to correct some vice they know exists, or to prevent some fault they have reasonable cause to fear.
10. As to simple mistrust, which should not be confused with suspicion, it is only an [152] involuntary and purely passive condition, to which we may be more or less inclined by our natural disposition without our free-will being at all involved. ”

“ Hence will mistrust give way to confidence, emulation will be raised, imitation be encouraged, a desire of instruction be excited, and the predatory ignorant savage be gradually moulded into the useful citizen and the rational man. ”

“ Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness,— ”

“ In whom, then, I would ask, is it most natural for us to place our trust? Surely in our own people—in those of whose blood we are—who have been about us from our childhood, and given us unnumbered proofs of love—and who have never been guilty of intentionally practising deception upon us. How can I ask of you to abandon the prepossessions of your fathers before you, and in which, true or false, you have been nurtured? Or how can you expect, that, in order to yield to your teachers the praise belonging solely to the truth, I should virtually declare my ancestors fools or hypocrites? ”

“ Oh, boys, young men, if you knew the frightful danger that you may be in some day, the subtle temptations that will beset you, the many instances of weakness about you, the shipwrecks of character, the utter ruin that comes to sisters and to innocent wives and children by the crimes of brothers, husbands and fathers, as we who are older know, you would not wonder that I speak as I do.
Every case of breach of trust, every defalcation, weakens confidence in human character. For every such instance of wrong-doing is a stab at your integrity if you are in a position of trust. ”

“ Always trusting anew and always most bitterly deceived, how can it be otherwise than that distrust, hatred, jealousy, vindictiveness, would nestle firmly in the soul, destroying every trace of that human principle, which shows itself in benevolence and gentle confidence. ”

“ See here what uncertain things our worldly possessions are; they are most so to those who have most of them, who devolve upon others all the care concerning them, and so put it into their power to cheat them, because they will not trouble themselves to see with their own eyes. See also what treachery is to be found even among those in whom trust is reposed. How hard is it to find one that confidence can be reposed in! Let God be true, but every man a liar. Though this steward is turned out for dealing dishonestly, yet still he does so. ”

“ We distrust one another, distrust those who manage public affairs, distrust our own fixed will to suffer the worst that may befall rather than cheat or steal or lie. Dishonesty hangs, like mephitic air, about our newspapers, our legislative assemblies, the municipal government of our towns and cities, about our churches even, since our religion itself seems to lack that highest kind of honesty, the downright and thorough sincerity which is its life-breath. ”

“ V. Consider of the greatness of the sin of distrust; how it denieth God in his attributes, and usually supposeth the creature to be above him.—Either thou doubtest of, or deniest his power to help thee, or his wisdom as deficient in making his promises, or finding out the means of thy deliverance, or his goodness and love, as if he would deceive thee, and so his truth and faithfulness in his promises. And if thou fear a man, how great soever, when God calleth thee to trust him for thy help, what dost thou but say, This man is more powerful than God? ”

“ There is oftentimes deception, if not absolute lying, in this talker. Why does he receive the secret with the strong promise, “I will tell no one, upon my honour,” if he cannot retain it in his own bosom?
Such persons are not to be trusted twice. As soon as you discover your facts given under covenant of secrecy are blabbed to others, you say, “I shall not trust him again:” and very properly too. Of course he tells as a secret what you tell him as a secret; but if he cannot retain it, how can he expect others? ”

“ I am not only prepared to confess, but to vindicate my sentiments. I cannot refrain, however, from premising, that in this controversy I labour under a disadvantage from which you are exempt. You believe that incredulity is immoral, and regard him as an object of suspicion and distrust whose creed is incongruous with your own. But truth is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. I can no more conceive that a man who perceives the disagreement of any ideas should be persuaded of their agreement, than that he should overcome a physical impossibility. ”

“ Think of what you are, of all that you are, and say if the pride and vanity of a less honest man than I would not be gratified and flattered by those very rumours from which I strive to save you. For, after all, what do I risk in aiding you to compromise yourself? What do I risk? To assist the world to misinterpret, to wither with its customary malice our intercourse, however innocent it may be? ”

“ There is no disposition more foolish than that of the sinner who presumes, without labouring toward his amendment, is the first: there is none more injurious to God, is the second. The folly of a false trust: the insult of a false trust. Let us explain these two truths.
Part I. — I am not afraid of openly agreeing with you, my brethren, that the mercies of the Lord are always more abundant than our wickednesses, and that his goodness may furnish legitimate motives of trust to all sinners. ”

“ Let us recollect that distrust and suspicion is on the increase for all those who wish to govern, direct, lead or conduct; that people are more and more inclined to think for themselves, to identify themselves with their own interest only, to lend a deaf ear to all except what is conducive of their own development. ”

“ The grand foundation of your good character must be Industry, fidelity to your employers, and an inviolable attachment to truth, both in words and deeds. To utter a falsehood to the prejudice of others, argues malice and baseness—to lie in excuse of one’s self, guilt and cowardice;—in both cases it evinces a design to deceive, with a view to benefit one’s self by the deceit;—besides, a liar is always in fear of being detected, and if once found out, he sinks into contempt, and is deservedly divested of all credit—all confidence—and all society. ”

“ The spirit of distrust and suspicion, which, in our free country, always follows with unremitting vigilance, the measures and the ministers of government, the emotions of wounded pride, of disappointed ambition, and, in some instances of personal enmity, combined to form the stimulus which actuated the conduct of many of the best and ablest characters among them. ”

“ The whole doctrine as well as practice of secrecy is so perplexing and dangerous, that, next to him who is compelled to trust, I think him unhappy who is chosen to be trusted; for he is often involved in scruples without the liberty of calling in the help of any other understanding; he is frequently drawn into guilt, under the appearance of friendship and honesty ”

“ The first is, that although every officious or jocose lie considered by itself, is injurious to nobody; still, the frequency and impunity with which they are told, have a pernicious effect on the public; for they deprive the generality of mankind of a very valuable benefit. To make my meaning more clearly understood, I must beg every man to contemplate the inconveniencies that would arise from a doubt or distrust, whether whatever is told us be true or false; which distrust is unavoidable, and founded on prudence, if we advert to the frequency with which people lie. ”

“ If such is the fearlessness of truth, and such the cowardice of error, the secrecy of the silent orders commends them less to the confidence which candor inspires, than to the suspicion which secrecy begets. ”

“ In forming this opinion of the easiness of secrecy they seem to have considered it as opposed, not to treachery, but loquacity, and to have conceived the man, whom they thus censured, not frighted by menaces to reveal, or bribed by promises to betray, but incited by the mere pleasure of talking, or some other motive equally trifling, to lay open his heart without reflection, and to let whatever he knew slip from him, only for want of power to retain it. ”

“ Then for a time skepticism of all men's motives prevails, and we look around in vain for some one to trust. Sometimes in desperation all faith in human goodness is cast off, and the high resolves with which we had started to make it felt as a power for the accomplishment of some noble purpose are bitterly cast aside as a vain delusion. ”

“ We have been told to preach confidence—correct principles and just dealings alone will inspire it. If a man speaks that which is not true about another, can you have confidence in him? No. If a man defrauds another, can you have confidence in him? ”

“ In the third arrogant trust in the security of human undertakings, without consideration of God's will, is denounced. The transition from the false confidence which leads men to judge others with a light heart, to the false confidence which leads men to account the future as their own, is easily made ”

“ It is the confidence reposed and deserved by the many which affords facilities for the bad faith of the few, so that, if colossal examples of dishonesty occur, there is no surer inclusion than that scrupulous honesty is displayed in the average of the transactions which, in the particular case, have supplied the delinquent with his opportunity. ”

“ Then, if our confidence has been misplaced, it only furnishes another example of the fickleness of human integrity to which we have become accustomed, and the world undergoes no especial change in our eyes. ”

“ Yet you feel the pressure of other combinations on you, the trust combinations, and you cry out. It is because you are not a trust. If you were a grocery trust for the whole United States, you would be singing another song. ”

“ And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. ”

“ Thou hast done every thing for the sake of reputation, and now thou art vainly trusting in thy deceitful works, instead of putting all thy trust in my son, who has offered himself to be a surety for thee. ”

“ In this review of the types of deception I have made no mention of such devices as the gaining of one's confidence for selfish ends, preying upon ignorance or fear, acting the friend while at heart the enemy, planned connivance and skilful plotting, together with the whole outfit of insincerity, villainy, and crime. ”

“ Eye her not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives glory to God though it sings only of its innocent loves. Suspicion creates its own cause; distrust begets reason for distrust. ”

“ And we know that in order to win some part of that great trust we must obey the standards of honesty and decency that lie below the surface and only need to be called to life and action in order to be used. ”

“ How could the wretch, about to escape all human reckoning, making cowardly confession of crime involving fellow-guilt, hope that his confidences would remain inviolate? One of the penalties of faithless duplicity is that all trust in fellow-fealty dies. ”

“ I shall, in all probability, be set on the watch myself, and if so—much as I must regret the necessity—it certainly will be most necessary for me to discharge what is committed to my trust. Is there no possibility, think you, of inventing some impenetrable disguise? ”