We may raise no difficulty about understanding the assertions that
Brown, and Jones, and Robinson are "honest," but when we come to the
case of Smith we discover a difficulty in placing him clearly on either
side of the line. That difficulty is nothing less than the difficulty of
knowing the meaning given to the word in this particular assertion. We
might, for instance, agree to mean by Smith's "honesty" that no shady
transactions could be legally proved against him, or that he is "honest
according to his lights," or again that he is about as honest as the
majority of his neighbors or the average of his trade or profession.[49]
That this is not a fanciful case can be shown by noticing how often we
speak of "transparent" honesty, or of "absolute" honesty: this is
notably one of the words for which we have a sliding scale of values,
which vary considerably with the age and the community. "Political
honesty" has a very different meaning in the England of to-day from that
which it had in the eighteenth century. To get at the exact meaning of
honesty, then, either for Mr. Sidgwick's Brown, Jones, Robinson, and
Smith, or for Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour as compared with Walpole or
Pitt, we need a good deal more than a dictionary definition. What has
already been said (p.
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