CHAPTER IXTHE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD
THE continued reiteration of a fantasy produces an impression on the brain cells akin to the impression produced by a fact. The fantasy of imagination roams without check or hindrance by childhood until it reaches a land which is believed to be reality. The borderland between fiction and fact is not always clearly defined and the immature mind of youth generally fails to distinguish the line where the one ends and the other begins. Fantasy is as real to childhood as reality.
Who cannot recall in his own childhood an event which illustrates the point? I was once the happy owner of a snare drum whichfilled a large place in my life. But I repeatedly and proudly claimed the ownership of two drums—a bass as well as a snare drum. My claim to the possession of a bass drum was founded on the discovery of a board in the wall of the barn, which, when struck with the fist, gave forth a sound which my childish fancy decided could be only the boom of a bass drum. While a companion beat this sounding board with his fist, I played the snare drum in unison. I never realized that I was lying when I said I owned two drums. I was not. The sounding board was as real a drum to the mind of my childhood as it is unreal to the mind of my maturity.
A little lad rushed into his mother’s room exclaiming, “Mamma, a hundred big Indians tried to catch me. I shot ’em. I killed two or free.” He was arrayed in an Indian suit, with a toy bow and arrows. The back yardwas the battle field which his imagination filled with blood-thirsty warriors seeking his scalp. His vivid imagination was running riot. It made every bush and tree an aboriginal. Shooting an arrow into a bush he shouted, “I gotcha, you bad Indian! I killed ye dead!” until his victory was complete and he ran to share his conquest with his mother.
Painters, while at work on a residence, climbed up and down a tall ladder extending to the roof. When the owner of the house returned home from business he was met by his five-year-old son who, pointing to the ladder, said proudly, “Papa, I climbed to the top of that ladder today.” It was physically impossible for a child of such tender years to accomplish this feat. His statement was not true but the child had not lied. With intense admiration he had watched the painters climb the ladder until in boyish fancyhe himself was playing this heroic and dangerous rôle. All day long he had marveled at the feat in which he pictured himself placing the principal part, until his obsession became a conviction. The actual facts photographed themselves in a blur on the poor film of his brain, already impressed with the clear-cut picture of his imagination, until the composite result was a mental image in which fancy predominated. If a lie is the voluntary and conscious perversion of the truth, he did not lie. An untruth is a misstatement of fact due to ignorance or misconception. He was not conscious of a misstatement of fact because he stated the facts as his mental processes recalled them. His inability to distinguish between the real and the unreal resulted in an error for which he was not morally responsible. He related the incident as a fact because his brain, powerfully impressed by the fancy, believed itto be a fact; therefore the boy told it as a fact.
Fancy is a fairy, that can hear,Ever, the melody of nature’s voice,And see all lovely visions that she will.—Frances S. Osgood.
Fancy is a fairy, that can hear,Ever, the melody of nature’s voice,And see all lovely visions that she will.—Frances S. Osgood.
Fancy is a fairy, that can hear,Ever, the melody of nature’s voice,And see all lovely visions that she will.
Fancy is a fairy, that can hear,
Ever, the melody of nature’s voice,
And see all lovely visions that she will.
—Frances S. Osgood.
—Frances S. Osgood.
When his mental development advances to a stage where he can differentiate clearly between fact and fancy; when the maturity of his mind enables him to draw clearer distinction between the real and the unreal, when, in a word, imagination is superseded by reason, then such errors will be impossible. His mistake was mental—not moral. Therefore, he was not culpable. I knew a loving mother who washed out her child’s mouth with soap as punishment for a similar “lie.” No graver injustice can be perpetrated by a parent than punishment for such an alleged offense. It should be recognized and accepted as an incident which is natural tomental immaturity. The thought is expressed by Dr. G. Stanley Hall in these words: “Sometimes their fancy is almost a visualization and develops a kind of mythopic faculty which spins clever yarns and suggests a sense, quite as pregnant as Froschmer asserts of all mental activity and of all universe itself, that all their life is imagination.” But I hear a mother, holding up her hands in horror, exclaiming, “I cannot let my child prevaricate! I must punish him or the habit will become fixed.”
Her solicitude for the child’s moral welfare is as commendable as it is necessary and her desire to prevent such incidents from becoming a habit is praiseworthy. Her methods, only, are wrong. Instead of punishment the child is entitled to instruction which will develop his mentality until he can distinguish between fact and fancy. With growth in mental stature comes coördinationof ideas and a clearer discernment of the line of demarcation between the real and the unreal, and when the child becomes mentally able to distinguish between the two, such misstatements of fact will be at an end. Falsehood in young children has been characterized by Dr. Hall as “a new mental combination independent of experience.”
In rare cases this mental fog continues, with diminishing intensity, through maturity. Everyone knows of the man who told a story so often that he himself finally believed it. It chiefly manifests itself in adults in exaggeration of the qualities, abilities, or prowess of the teller. Witness the fisherman of your acquaintance whose account of the weight and size of his biggest fish grows with each succeeding recital. He does not mean to lie. He thinks he is telling the truth. In the beginning he justified his exaggeration of weight and size by doubting the accuracyof the scale and rule by which he weighed and measured the fish. The continued repetition of his yarn produced an impression on his brain closely resembling actuality. He deceived himself. Pride in his piscatorial prowess made deception easy. His error was partly mental, partly moral, the latter being in direct ratio to the clarity of his mental processes. It is a tremendous tribute to the mental stability and moral discernment of a fisherman to be able to refrain, in after years, from overstating the weight of his biggest fish.
We now consider another phase of misstatement of fact—the falsehood of the older boy. At the age of six or seven the mental fog begins to clear. He sees things in a truer, brighter light. The relationship of facts to each other becomes more and more cognizable. His moral faculties are emerging from a chaos of mental impressions.This age, approximately, marks the birth of moral consciousness. His conception of right and wrong takes form and begins its process of development. At this period he begins to distinguish between fact and fancy and as his mental processes become clarified by increasing maturity, so in a corresponding degree his confusion of the unreal with the real disappears. Mentality begins to dominate imagination.
What of the boy, under these conditions, who tells a lie? An inquiry into the motives which prompt his falsehoods may clarify the problem and afford a solution. The study of a large number of untruthful boys has developed the fact that their motives for mendacity are few and are usually comprehended under one class—the desire to escape punishment for an offense. Other and lesser incentives to lying are envy, boasting, revenge, jealousy, and imitation, but none of these isas potent as the fear of a reprimand, a scolding, or corporal punishment.
A scolding and a whipping are both painful—one in mind, the other in body. It is natural for one to seek to avoid pain and suffering. It is equally certain that punishment must inevitably follow the violation of law—whether parental law, physical law, or the law of the land. Loading the stomach with indigestible food brings its own punishment in the disturbance of the bodily functions. The commission of a felony necessitates a term of imprisonment after conviction; and with equal certainty punishment should follow the violation of parental law. But if that punishment is unnecessarily severe or if it violates the boy’s sense of fairness and justice, he will seek to avoid it by the most effective weapon of defense at hand—falsehood. Nothing is more conducive to deceit thanfrequent scoldings or floggings for trivial offenses, and the elimination of corporal and unduly severe mental punishments will remove the chief incentive to falsehood.
The remedy for the falsehoods which have their origin in the lesser provocatives referred to above is moral suasion, a hackneyed phrase often used and little understood. Literally it implies the persuasive influence of moral teaching. In its broader aspect and as a cure for lying, it comprehends the culture of moral consciousness; training of the will; fixation of the habit of obedience; teaching the evil results which always follow falsehood; the development of mentality (without which there can be no comprehension of moral concepts); and the influence of parental example in the exact and scrupulous adherence to truth. All these combined produce the composite result called moral suasion, which is generally effective.