The lie is a specific evil which man has introduced into nature.  All our deeds of violence and our misdeeds are only as it were a highly-bred development of what this and that creature of nature is able to achieve in its own way.  But the lie is our very own invention, different in kind from every deceit that the animals can produce.  A lie was possible only after a creature, man, was capable of conceiving the being of truth.  It was possible only as directed against the conceived truth.  In a lie the spirit practices treason against itself.
- Martin Buber, Good and Evil, pg. 7