Aubrey de Vere and Bede Jarrett on honesty
It's easy to be honest enough not to be hanged
Aubrey de Vere was an Irish poet and critic, who under the influence of St. John Henry Newman, entered the Church in 1851 at the age of 37. Bede Jarrett was one of the leading Catholic thinkers in early twentieth century England, a founder of Blackfriars the journal and Blackfriars the college, and the author of many books, including unexpected ones like Medieval Socialism. Vere’s words appear in Aubrey de Vere: A Memoir, based on his unpublished diaries and correspondence. Jarrett’s response appears in his Meditations for Layfolk.
Aubrey de Vere
I should almost like the speculation of going into Parliament as an honest politician. But then I suppose everyone begins with such aspirations, and I should soon become as dishonest as my neighbours.
How great a mistake to think it easy to be honest! It is easy to be honest enough not to be hanged.
To be really honest means to subdue one's party spirit, one's vanity, one's prepossessions, ideals — stating things fairly, not humouring your argument — doing jtistice to your enemies, whether you are stronger than they or not; making confessions whether you can afford it or not; refusing unmerited praise; looking painful truths in the face, and not merely seeing ‘the utmost part of them’; knowing what one means, and knowing when one has no meaning, and shaking off one's plausibilities, and fifty-five things which men see with pleasure, and which the angels see through. . . .
[I]t is much easier to get the crowning virtues of humanity than those foundation virtues which, being out of sight, are apt to be out of mind too.
Bede Jarrett
All this clear-sightedness . . . is something also that does not come by the mere passage of years, but by the very definite overcoming of nature by supernature, or, perhaps more accurately, it is the true evolution of nature when developed by supernature.
It is not a thing that one becomes, but a thing one ultimately and definitely acquires — indeed, it is precisely that which man is put here to acquire. He is human just in proportion to the degree in which he attains to this ideal. He has, that is to say, the dominion over himself, the lordship which reason and will can alone secure.
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