No doubt these propensities, though not amounting in the stage of development now dealt with to full lying, may, if not restrained, 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 abnormal, 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 example, 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 pretenses.[1]
A fertile source of childish untruth, especially in the case of girls, is the wish to please. Here we have to do with very dissimilar 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 supposing that it is a pure wish to please and is not complicated with an arrière pensée—the hope of gaining some favor from the object of the devotion. Perhaps there is no variety of childish fault more difficult to deal with, if only for the reason that in checking 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 admire 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.
