This is the type of problem. Suppose that there is a food-shortage and famine at Rhodes, and the price of corn is extremely high. An honest man has brought the Rhodians a large stock of corn from Alexandria. He is aware that a number of other traders are on their way from Alexandria – he has seen their ships making for Rhodes, with substantial cargoes of grain. Ought he to tell the Rhodians this? Or is he to say nothing and sell his stock at the best price he can get? I am assuming he is an enlightened, honest person. I am asking you to consider the deliberations and self-searchings of the sort of man who would not keep the Rhodians in ignorance if he thought this would be dishonest but who is not certain that dishonesty would be involved.
In cases of this kind1 that eminent and respected Stoic Diogenes of Babylon habitually takes one side, and his very clever pupil Antipater of Tarsus the other. Antipater says that all the facts must be revealed, and the purchaser must be as fully informed as the seller. According to Diogenes, on the other hand, the seller must declare the defects of his wares as far as the law of the land requires, but otherwise – provided he tells no untruths – he is entitled, as a seller of goods, to sell them as profitably as he can.
‘I have brought my cargo, I have offered it for sale, I offer it as cheap as other dealers – perhaps cheaper, when I am over-stocked. Whom am I cheating?’
Antipater argues on the other side. ‘What do you mean? You ought to work for your fellow-men and serve the interests of mankind. These are the conditions under which you were born, these are the principles which you are in duty bound to follow and obey – you must identify your interests with the interests of the community, and theirs with yours. How, then, can you conceal from your fellow-men that abundant supplies and benefits are due to reach them shortly?’
‘Concealing is one thing,’ perhaps Diogenes will reply, ‘but not revealing is another. If I do not reveal to you, at this moment, what the good are like – or the nature of the Highest Good -1 am not concealing that information (which would certainly be more useful to you than the knowledge that wheat prices were down). I am not obliged to tell you everything that would be useful for you to know.’
‘Oh yes, you are,’ Antipater will reply, ‘if you remember that nature has joined mankind together in one community.’
‘I remember that,’ the answer will be, ‘but surely this community is one in which private property exists? If not, nothing ought to be sold at all – everything ought to be given away.’
In this whole argument, you will observe, neither party is saying ‘I will perform this action, however wrong, because it is advantageous’. One side is claiming that the action is advantageous without being wrong, while the other urges that itwrong, and should therefore not be committed.
Or suppose that an honest man wants to sell a house because of certain defects of which he alone is aware. The building is supposed to be quite healthy, but is in fact insanitary, and he is aware that it is; or the place is badly built and is falling down, but nobody knows this except the owner. Suppose he does not disclose these facts to purchasers, and sells the house for much more than he expected. Has he behaved unfairly and dishonestly?
‘Certainly he has,’ says Antipater. ‘At Athens, not to set a man right when he has lost his way is penalized by general execration – and is it not precisely the same thing to let a purchaser make a mistake and ruin himself with a very heavy loss? That is even worse than not showing a man the way, since in this case the purchaser is being deliberately misled.’
‘But he did not force you to buy, did he?’ objects Diogenes. ‘He did not even ask you to. He offered for sale something he did not want; you bought something you wanted. Seeing that people are not blamed when they advertise a bad, ill-constructed house as fine and well-built, still less ought they to be censured if they merely refrain from speaking in its praise. For when the purchaser can exercise his own judgement, what fraud can there be on the part of the seller? If you are not obliged to make good everything you say, how can you be responsible for what you do not say? It would surely be exceptionally stupid for a seller to enumerate the defects of what he is selling, and the height of absurdity for the auctioneer to proclaim, at the owner’s request, An Insanitary House for Sale!’
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These, then, are some of the doubtful cases in which one side takes a moral view, and the other cites advantage by asserting that it is not only right to do what seems to be advantageous but wrong to avoid so doing. Such conflicts between right and apparent advantage are frequent. But I must record my opinion about these cases; for I did not write them down merely to raise problems, but to solve them. I believe, then, that the corn-merchant ought not to have concealed the facts from the Rhodians; and the man who was selling the house should not have withheld its defects from the purchaser. Holding things back does not always amount to concealment; but it does when you want people, for your own profit, to be kept in the dark about something which you know and would be useful for them to know. Anyone can see the sort of concealment that this amounts to – and the sort of person who practises it. He is the reverse of open, straightforward, fair, and honest: he is a shifty, deep, artful, treacherous, malevolent, underhand, sly, habitual rogue. Surely one does not derive advantage from earning all those names and many more besides!
If, then, mere suppression of the truth deserves censure, what must we think of people who have actually told lies? A Roman gentleman called Gaius Canius, quite a witty and cultured man, once went to Syracuse, not on business but on holiday; we owe him the story that follows. He often spoke of buying a little estate where he could invite his friends and enjoy himself without intrusion. When his intention became known, a Syracusan banker called Pythius disclosed his own possession of just such a property; this was not for sale, he said, but Canius could treat the place as his own if he wanted to. Pythius forthwith asked him to dinner there on the following day, and Canius accepted.
Now Pythius, being a banker, had people of all classes ready to oblige him. So he sent for some fishermen, and requested them to do their next day’s fishing in front of his grounds; and he issued them full instructions. Canius arrived to dinner punctually, and Pythius gave him a sumptuous entertainment. Before their gaze there was a fleet of fishing-boats; each fisherman brought in his catch, which he then deposited at Pythius’s feet. ‘Tell me, Pythius,’ said Canius, ‘what does this mean? – all these fish and all these boats?’ ‘It is quite natural,’ Pythius replied. ‘All the fish and all the water in Syracuse are at this very spot; without this place of mine, the men could do nothing.’
Canius became excited and pressed Pythius to sell him the property. Pythius showed reluctance at first; but finally – to cut the story short – he gave in. Canius was rich and wanted the estate, and he paid what Pythius asked – and bought all its furnishings as well. Pythius clinched the agreement and entered the terms in his books.
On the following day Canius invited his friends to the house, and arrived early. As far as boats were concerned he saw not so much as a single tholo-pin. He inquired from his next-door neighbour if there was some fisherman’s holiday which accounted for their invisibility. ‘I don’t know of any,’ was the answer. ‘But nobody does fish here; so yesterday I couldn’t think what had happened.’
Canius was furious. But what was he to do? For at that time my friend and colleague Gaius Aquilius Gallus1 had not yet laid down the established forms of pleading in cases of criminal fraud. When Aquilius was asked what he meant by criminal fraud in this connexion, he used to answer: pretending one thing and doing another – a masterly reply, characteristic of a lawyer so expert at framing definitions.
So Pythius and everyone else whose actions belie their words are ill-intentioned, faithless, and dishonest. Nothing that such vicious people do can possibly be advantageous.