I.—OF TRUTH.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth: nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.
The opening sentence in Bacon’s essay “Of Truth” is justly famous. Famous, memorable, and sad: if ‘”jesting Pilate” had only waited, just a while, would he have gotten his answer?
Bacon continues in his weary catalog, depicting those who simply like to spin and spin, saying one thing and then another, thinking to flaunt their freedom by never believing anything, nor speaking with any conviction. Then comes an even harsher pronouncement: the problem is not that truth is hard to find, or that it overrules everything once it is found, but that all too often the lie is simply delicious, irresistible. Lovable.
Given the “natural though corrupt love of the lie itself,” why, indeed, would one wait for an answer to so spectacularly unsophisticated a question as “what is truth”? Who would even ask such a question unironically? Bacon implies that Pilate’s question was contemptuous–“scoffing,” as Brian Vickers defines “jesting” in the Oxford University Press edition (1996). It’s easy to read the question that way, especially in the long tradition of portraying Pilate as a patsy, a buffoon, a dandy utterly unconcerned with justice who washes his hands of the whole matter.
But there may be another story here.
Perhaps Pilate’s question is not a contemptuous question or a cynical scoff, but the evasive, desperate, and finally exhausted maneuver of a career politician facing a situation he could not have anticipated, convinced that even if there is such a thing as truth, even if he beholds before him the very man who might answer such a question, it will not, cannot matter. When has it ever mattered?
I feel some sympathy for Pilate. It is hard to stay for an answer. Truth, justice, vindication, deliverance: these are so often delayed, sometimes many generations, until we fear they will never come.
Tomorrow, though, is Easter Day.
By Nikolai Ge – http://www.picture.art-catalog.ru/picture.php?id_picture=7515, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4267825