THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



treating it always, from earliest infancy, with scrupulous 

 honesty and with unswerving fairness. 



Now I suppose there is not one parent in a hundred 

 who would not be disposed, on hearing this principle 

 thus stated, to shrug his shoulders and say, "Why, 

 that is the most axiomatic of platitudes." 



Yet I affirm with much confidence that by no means 

 one parent in a hundred even confining attention to 

 the ranks of the educated and intelligent acts on the 

 principle in question with even approximate consistency. 

 And common experience will, I think, corroborate the 

 affirmation, if we correctly understand our terms. 



How often do we hear a parent evading the question 

 of a child, or answering it with downright falsehood 

 on the plea that it could not understand the truth, or that 

 it is better for it not to know the truth. 



And again how often do we see the fond parent en- 

 gaged in the task of filling the infant mind with fictitious 

 ideas about bears and black men, and fairies and gnomes 

 of sundry varieties. 



At a later day the process of unlearning these false- 

 hoods must be a main feature of the child's education ; 

 the apparitions must be dethroned from their position 

 as real beings. But usually these creatures of fancy 

 refuse to be altogether banished, and linger throughout 

 the life of the individual as shadowy superstitions, giving 

 the mind a bias toward belief in the supernatural. 

 Often they become rehabilitated in the mind of the 

 adult, and accepted once more, slightly changed in 

 form, as realities. Then we call them delusional ideas, 

 and we say their possessor is insane; but we are prone 



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