Edith, remarked to her: "That's a pretty name. My baby is Eleanor. Isn't that a pretty name?" On being thus questioned she felt in a dreadful difficulty, for she did not like the sound of "Eleanor," and yet feared to be rude and say so. She got out of it by saying she did not like the name as well as "Edith."
These temptations and struggles, which may impress themselves on memory for the whole of life, illustrate the influence of older persons' wishes and expectations on children's statements. It is possible that we have here to do with something akin to "suggestion," that force which produces such amazing results on the hypnotized subject, and which is known to be a potent influence for good or for evil on the young mind. A leading question of the form: "Isn't this pretty?" "Aren't you fond of me?" may easily overpower for a moment the child's own conviction, superimposing that of the stronger mind. Such passive statements coming from a mind overridden by another's authority are not to be confused with conscious falsehoods.
This suggestion often combines with other forces. Here is a good example: A little American girl, sent into the oak shrubbery to get a leaf, saw a snake, which so frightened her that she ran home without the leaf. As cruel Fate would have it, she met her brothers and told them she had seen a "sauger." "They knew" (writes the lady who recalls this reminiscence of her childhood) "a difference between snakes and their habits, and, boylike, wanted to tease me, and said, 'Twas no sauger—it didn't have a red ring round its neck, now, did it?' My heated imagination saw just such a serpent as soon as their words were spoken, and I declared it had a ring about its neck." In this way she was led on to say that it had scars and a little bell on its neck, and was soundly rated by her brothers as a "liar."[1] Here we have a case of "illusion of memory" induced by suggestion acting on a mind made preternaturally sensitive by the fear from which it had not yet recovered. If there was a germ of mendacity in the case, it must have sprung from the half-conscious shrinking from the brothers' ridicule, the wish not to seem utterly ignorant about these boyish matters, the snakes. Yet who would say that such swift, unseizable movements of feeling in the dim background of consciousness made the child's quick responses lies in the proper sense of the word?
It seems paradoxical, yet is, I believe, indisputable, that a large part of childish untruth comes upon the scene in connection with moral authority and discipline. We shall see by and by that unregenerate child-nature is very apt to take up the hostile attitude of self-defense toward those who administer law and inflict
- ↑ Sara E. Wiltse, The Christian Union, vol. xl, No. 26.
