STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 81 1 



No doubt these propensities, though not amounting in the 

 stage of development now dealt with to full lying, may, if not re- 

 strained, develop into true lying. An unbridled fancy and strong 

 love of effect will lead an older child to say what it vaguely 

 knows at the time to be false in order to startle and mystify 

 others. Such exaggeration of these impulses is distinctly abnor- 

 mal, as may be seen by its affinity to what we can observe in the 

 case of the insane. The same is true of the exaggeration of the 

 vainglorious or " showing-off " impulses, as illustrated, for exam- 

 ple, in the cases mentioned by Dr. Stanley Hall of children who, 

 on going to a new town or school, would assume new characters 

 which were kept up with difficulty by means of many false pre- 

 tenses.* 



A fertile source of childish untruth, especially in the case of 

 girls, is the wish to please. Here we have to do with very dis- 

 similar things. An emotional child who, in a sudden fit of 

 tenderness for mother, aunt, or teacher, gushes out, " Oh, I do 

 love you ! " or " What sweet, lovely eyes you have ! " or other pretty 

 flattery, may be sincere for the moment, the exaggeration being 

 indeed the outcome of a sudden ebullition of feeling. There is 

 more of acting and artfulness in the flatteries which take their 

 rise in a calculating wish to say the nice, agreeable things. Some 

 children are, I believe, adepts at these amenities. Those in whom 

 the impulse is strong and dominant are presumably those who, in 

 later years, make the good society actors. In all this childish 

 simulation and exaggeration we have to do with the germs of 

 what may become a great moral evil insincerity that is, falsity 

 in respect of what is best and ought to be sacred. Yet this 

 childish flattery, though undoubtedly a mild mendacity, is a most 

 amiable mendacity through its charming motives, always sup- 

 posing that it is a pure wish to please and is not complicated with 

 an arriere pensee the hope of gaining some favor from the ob- 

 ject of the devotion. Perhaps there is no variety of childish fault 

 more difficult to deal with, if only for the reason that in check- 

 ing the impulse we are robbing ourselves of the sweetest offerings 

 of childhood. 



The other side of this wish to please is the fear to give offense, 

 and this, I suspect, is a fertile source of childish prevarication. 

 If, for example, a child is asked whether he does not like or ad- 

 mire something, his feeling that the questioner expects him to 

 say " Yes " makes it very hard to say " No/' Mrs. Burnett gives us 

 a reminiscence of this early experience. When she was less than 

 three, she writes, a lady visitor, a friend of her mother, having 

 found out that the baby newly added to the family was called 



* Article Children's Lies, p. 67. 



