TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.
The duty of telling the truth seems to us, until we have devoted special
consideration to the subject, the most simple thing in the world, both to
understand and to perform; and when we find young children disregarding it
we are surprised and shocked, and often imagine that it indicates something
peculiar and abnormal in the moral sense of the offender. A little
reflection, however, will show us how very different the state of the case
really is. What do we mean by the obligation resting upon us to tell the
truth? It is simply, in general terms, that it is our duty to make our
statements correspond with the realities which they purport to express.
This is, no doubt, our duty, as a general rule, but there are so many
exceptions to this rule, and the principles on which the admissibility
of the exceptions depend are so complicated and so abstruse, that it is
wonderful that children learn to make the necessary distinctions as soon as
they do.
_Natural Guidance to the Duty of telling the Truth_.
The child, when he first acquires the art of using and understanding
language, is filled with wonder and pleasure to find that he can represent
external objects that he observes, and also ideas passing through his mind,
by means of sounds formed by his organs of speech. Such sounds, he finds,
have both these powers--that is, they can represent realities or fancies.
Thus, when he utters the sounds _I see a bird_, they may denote either a
mere conception in his mind, or an outward actuality. How is he possibly to
know, by any instinct, or intuition, or moral sense when it is right for
him to use them as representations of a mere idea, and when it is wrong for
him to use them, unless they correspond with some actual reality?
The fact that vivid images or conceptions may be awakened in his mind by
the mere hearing of certain sounds made by himself or another is something
strange and wonderful to him; and though he comes to his consciousness of
this susceptibility by degrees, it is still, while he is acquiring it, and
extending the scope and range of it, a source of continual pleasure to him.
The necessity of any correspondence of these words, and of the images which
they excite, with actual realities, is a necessity which arises from the
relations of man to man in the social state, and he has no means whatever
of knowing any thing about it except by instruction.
There is not only no ground for expecting that children should perceive any
such necessity either by any kind of instinct, or intuition, or embryo
moral sense, or by any reasoning process of which his incipient powers are
capable; but even if he should by either of these means be inclined to
entertain such an idea, his mind would soon be utterly confused in regard
to it by what he observes constantly taking place around him in respect to
the use of language by others whose conduct, much more than their precepts,
he is accustomed to follow as his guide.
_A very nice Distinction_.
A mother, for example, takes her little son, four or five years old, into
her lap to amuse him with a story. She begins: "When I was a little boy I
lived by myself. All the bread and cheese I got I laid upon the shelf," and
so on to the end. The mother's object is accomplished. The boy is amused.
He is greatly interested and pleased by the wonderful phenomenon taking
place within him of curious images awakened in his mind by means of sounds
entering his ear--images of a little boy living alone, of his reaching up
to put bread and cheese upon a shelf, and finally of his attempting to
wheel a little wife home--the story ending with the breaking and downfall
of the wheelbarrow, wife and all. He does not reflect philosophically upon
the subject, but the principal element of the pleasure afforded him is the
wonderful phenomenon of the formation of such vivid and strange images in
his mind by means of the mere sound of his mother's voice.
He knows at once, if any half-formed reflections arise in his mind at all,
that what his mother has told him is not true--that is, that the words and
images which they awaken in his mind had no actual realities corresponding
with them. He knows, in the first place, that his mother never was a boy,
and does not suppose that she ever lived by herself, and laid up her bread
and cheese upon a shelf. The whole story, he understands, if he exercises
any thought about it whatever--wheelbarrow catastrophe and all--consists
only of words which his mother speaks to him to give him pleasure.
By-and-by his mother gives him a piece of cake, and he goes out into the
garden to play. His sister is there and asks him to give her a piece of his
cake. He hesitates. He thinks of the request long enough to form a distinct
image in his mind of giving her half of it, but finally concludes not to do
so, and eats it all himself.
When at length he comes in, his mother accidentally asks him some question
about the cake, and he says he gave half of it to his sister. His mother
seems much pleased. He knew that she would be pleased. He said it, in fact,
on purpose to please her. The words represented no actual reality, but only
a thought passing through his mind, and he spoke, in a certain sense, for
the purpose of giving his mother pleasure. The case corresponds in all
these particulars with that of his mother's statement in respect to her
being once a little boy and living by herself. Those words were spoken by
her to give him pleasure, and he said what he did to give her pleasure.
To give her pleasure! the reader will perhaps say, with some surprise,
thinking that to assign such a motive as that is not, by any means, putting
a fair and proper construction upon the boy's act. His design was, it will
be said, to shield himself from censure, or to procure undeserved praise.
And it is, no doubt, true that, on a nice analysis of the motives of the
act, such as we, in our maturity, can easily make, we shall find that
design obscurely mingled with them. But the child does not analyze. He can
not. He does not look forward to ultimate ends, or look for the hidden
springs that lie concealed among the complicated combinations of impulses
which animate him. In the case that we are supposing, all that we can
reasonably believe to be present to his mind is a kind of instinctive
feeling that for him to say that he ate the cake all himself would bring a
frown, or at least a look of pain and distress, to his mother's face, and
perhaps words of displeasure for him; while, if he says that he gave half
to his sister, she will look pleased and happy. This is as far as he sees.
And he may be of such an age, and his mental organs may be in so embryonic
a condition, that it is as far as he ought to be expected to look; so that,
as the case presents itself to his mind in respect to the impulse which at
the moment prompts him to act, he said what he did from a desire to give
his mother pleasure, and not pain. As to the secret motive, which might
have been his ultimate end, _that_ lay too deeply concealed for him to
be conscious of it. And we ourselves too often act from the influence
of hidden impulses of selfishness, the existence of which we are wholly
unconscious of, to judge him too harshly for his blindness.
At length, by-and-by, when his sister conies in, and the untruth is
discovered, the boy is astonished and bewildered by being called to account
in a very solemn manner by his mother on account of the awful wickedness of
having told a lie!
_How the Child sees it_.
Now I am very ready to admit that, notwithstanding the apparent resemblance
between these two cases, this resemblance is only apparent and superficial;
but the question is, whether it is not sufficient to cause such a child
to confound them, and to be excusable, until he has been enlightened by
appropriate instruction, for not clearly distinguishing the cases where
words must be held strictly to conform to actual realities, from those
where it is perfectly right and proper that they should only represent
images or conceptions of the mind.
A father, playing with his children, says, "Now I am a bear, and am going
to growl." So he growls. Then he says, "Now I am a dog, and am going to
bark." He is not a bear, and he is not a dog, and the children know it.
His words, therefore, even to the apprehension of the children, express an
untruth, in the sense that they do not correspond with any actual reality.
It is not a wrongful untruth. The children understand perfectly well that
in such a case as this it is not in any sense wrong to say what is not
true. But how are they to know what kind of untruths are right, and what
kind are wrong, until they are taught what the distinction is and upon what
it depends.
Unfortunately many parents confuse the ideas, or rather the moral sense of
their children, in a much more vital manner by untruths of a different kind
from this--as, for example, when a mother, in the presence of her children,
expresses a feeling of vexation and annoyance at seeing a certain visitor
coming to make a call, and then, when the visitor enters the room, receives
her with pretended pleasure, and says, out of politeness, that she is very
glad to see her. Sometimes a father will join with his children, when
peculiar circumstances seem, as he thinks, to require it, in concealing
something from their mother, or deceiving her in regard to it by
misrepresentations or positive untruths. Sometimes even the mother will do
this in reference to the father. Of course such management as this must
necessarily have the effect of bringing up the children to the idea that
deceiving by untruths is a justifiable resort in certain cases--a doctrine
which, though entertained by many well-meaning persons, strikes a fatal
blow at all confidence in the veracity of men; for whenever we know of any
persons that they entertain this idea, it is never afterwards safe to trust
in what they say, since we never can know that the case in hand is not,
for some reason unknown to us, one of those which justify a resort to
falsehood.
But to return to the case of the children that are under the training of
parents who will not themselves, under any circumstances, falsify their
word--that is, will never utter words that do not represent actual reality
in any of the wrongful ways. Such children can not be expected to know of
themselves, or to learn without instruction, what the wrongful ways are,
and they never do learn until they have made many failures. Many, it is
true, learn when they are very young. Many evince a remarkable tenderness
of conscience in respect to this as well as to all their other duties, so
fast as they are taught them. And some become so faithful and scrupulous in
respect to truth, at so early an age, that their parents quite forget the
progressive steps by which they advanced at the beginning. We find many a
mother who will say of her boy that he never told an untruth, but we do not
find any man who will say of himself, that when he was a boy he never told
one.
_Imaginings and Rememberings easily mistaken for each other_.
But besides the complicated character of the general subject, as it
presents itself to the minds of children--that is, the intricacy to them of
the question when there must be a strict correspondence between the words
spoken and an actual reality, and when they may rightly represent mere
images or fancies of the mind--there is another great difficulty in their
way, one that is very little considered and often, indeed, not at all
understood by parents--and that is, that in the earliest years the
distinction between realities and mere fancies of the mind is very
indistinctly drawn. Even in our minds the two things are often confounded.
We often have to pause and think in order to decide whether a mental
perception of which we are conscious is a remembrance of a reality, or a
revival of some image formed at some previous time, perhaps remote, by a
vivid description which we have read or heard, or even by our own fancy.
"Is that really so, or did I dream it?" How often is such a question heard.
And persons have been known to certify honestly, in courts of justice, to
facts which they think they personally witnessed, but which were really
pictured in their minds in other ways. The picture was so distinct and
vivid that they lost, in time, the power of distinguishing it from other
and, perhaps, similar pictures which had been made by their witnessing the
corresponding realities.
Indeed, instead of being surprised that these different origins of present
mental images are sometimes confounded, it is actually wonderful that they
can generally be so clearly distinguished; and we can not explain, even to
ourselves, what the difference is by which we do distinguish them.
For example, we can call up to our minds the picture of a house burning
and a fireman going up by a ladder to rescue some person appearing at the
window. Now the image, in such a case, may have had several different modes
of origin. 1. We may have actually witnessed such a scene the evening
before. 2. Some one may have given us a vivid description of it. 3. We may
have fancied it in writing a tale, and 4. We may have dreamed it. Here are
four different prototypes of a picture which is now renewed, and there is
something in the present copy which enables us, in most cases, to determine
at once what the real prototype was. That is, there is something in the
picture which now arises in our mind as a renewal or repetition of the
picture made the day before, which makes us immediately cognizant of the
cause of the original picture--that is, whether it came from a reality that
we witnessed, or from a verbal or written description by another person, or
whether it was a fanciful creation of our own mind while awake, or a dream.
And it is extremely difficult for us to discover precisely what it is, in
the present mental picture, which gives us this information in respect to
the origin of its prototype. It is very easy to say, "Oh, we _remember_."
But remember is only a word. We can only mean by it, in such a case as
this, that there is some _latent difference_ between the several images
made upon our minds to-day of things seen, heard of, fancied, or dreamed
yesterday, by which we distinguish each from all the others. But the most
acute metaphysicians--men who are accustomed to the closest scrutiny of the
movements and the mode of action of their minds--find it very difficult to
discover what this difference is.
_The Result in the Case of Children_.
Now, in the case of young children, the faculties of perception
and consciousness and the power of recognizing the distinguishing
characteristics of the different perceptions and sensations of their minds
are all immature, and distinctions which even to mature minds are not so
clear but that they are often confounded, for them form a bewildering
maze. Their minds are occupied with a mingled and blended though beautiful
combination of sensations, conceptions, fancies, and remembrances, which
they do not attempt to separate from each other, and their vocal organs are
animated by a constant impulse to exercise themselves with any utterances
which the incessant and playful gambollings of their faculties frame. In
other words, the vital force liberated by the digestion of the food seeks
an issue now in this way and now in that, through every variety of mental
and bodily action. Of course, to arrange and systematize these actions,
to establish the true relations between all these various faculties and
powers, and to regulate the obligations and duties by which the exercise
of them should be limited and controlled, is a work of time, and is to be
effected, not by the operation of any instinct or early intuition, but by
a course of development--effected mainly by the progress of growth and
experience, though it is to be aided and guided by assiduous but gentle
training and instruction.
If these views are correct, we can safely draw from them the following
conclusions.
_Practical Conclusions_.
1. We must not expect from children that they will from the beginning
understand and feel the obligation to speak the truth, any more than we
look for a recognition, on their part, of the various other principles of
duty which arise from the relations of man to man in the social state. We
do not expect that two babies creeping upon the floor towards the same
plaything should each feel instinctively impelled to grant the other the
use of it half of the time. Children must be taught to tell the truth, just
as they must be taught the principles of justice and equal rights. They
generally get taught by experience--that is, by the rough treatment and
hard knocks which they bring upon themselves by their violation of these
principles. But the faithful parent can aid them in acquiring the necessary
knowledge in a far easier and more agreeable manner by appropriate
instruction.
2. The mother must not be distressed or too much troubled when she finds
that her children, while very young are prone to fall into deviations from
the truth, but only to be made to feel more impressed with the necessity of
renewing her own efforts to teach them the duty, and to train them to the
performance of it.
3. She must not be too stern or severe in punishing the deviations from
truth in very young children, or in expressing the displeasure which
they awaken in her mind. It is instruction, not expressions of anger or
vindictive punishment, that is required in most cases. Explain to them the
evils that would result if we could not believe what people say, and tell
them stories of truth-loving children on the one hand, and of false and
deceitful children on the other. And, above all, notice, with indications
of approval and pleasure, when the child speaks the truth under
circumstances which might have tempted him to deviate from it. One instance
of this kind, in which you show that you observe and are pleased by his
truthfulness, will do more to awaken in his heart a genuine love for the
truth than ten reprovals, or even punishments, incurred by the violation of
it. And in the same spirit we must make use of the religious considerations
which are appropriate to this subject--that is, we must encourage the child
with the approval of his heavenly Father, when he resists the temptation
to deviate from the truth, instead of frightening him, when he falls, by
terrible denunciations of the anger of God against liars; denunciations
which, however well-deserved in the cases to which they are intended
to apply, are not designed for children in whose minds the necessary
discriminations, as pointed out in this chapter, are yet scarcely formed.
_Danger of confounding Deceitfulness and Falsehood_.
4. Do not confound the criminality of deceitfulness by acts with falsehood
by words, by telling the child, when he resorts to any artifice or
deception in order to gain his ends, that it is as bad to deceive as to
lie. It is not as bad, by any means. There is a marked line of distinction
to be drawn between falsifying one's word and all other forms of deception,
for there is such a sacredness in the spoken word, that the violation of
it is in general far more reprehensible than the attempt to accomplish the
same end by mere action. If a man has lost a leg, it may be perfectly right
for him to wear a wooden one which is so perfectly made as to deceive
people--and even to wear it, too, with the _intent_ to deceive people by
leading them to suppose that both his legs are genuine--while it would be
wrong; for him to assert in words that this limb was not an artificial one.
It is right to put a chalk egg in a hen's nest to deceive the hen, when, if
the hen could understand language, and if we were to suppose hens "to have
any rights that we are bound to respect," it would be wrong to _tell_ her
that it was a real egg. It would be right for a person, when his house
was entered by a robber at night, to point an empty gun at the robber to
frighten him away by leading him to think that the gun was loaded; but it
would be wrong, as I think--though I am aware that many persons would think
differently--for him to say in words that the gun was loaded, and that he
would fire unless the robber went away. These cases show that there is a
great difference between deceiving by false appearances, which is sometimes
right, and doing it by false statements, which, as I think, is always
wrong. There is a special and inviolable sacredness, which every lover of
the truth should attach to his spoken word.
5. We must not allow the leniency with which, according to the views here
presented, we are to regard the violations of truth by young persons,
while their mental faculties and their powers of discrimination are yet
imperfectly developed, to lead us to lower the standard of right in their
minds, so as to allow them to imbibe the idea that we think that falsehood
is, after all, no great sin, and still less, to suppose that we consider it
sometimes, in extreme cases, allowable. We may, indeed, say, "The truth is
not to be spoken at all times," but to make the aphorism complete we must
add, that _falsehood_ is to be spoken _never_. There is no other possible
ground for absolute confidence in the word of any man except the conviction
that his principle is, that it is _never, under any circumstances, or to
accomplish any purpose whatever,_ right for him to falsify it.
A different opinion, I am aware, prevails very extensively among mankind,
and especially among the continental nations of Europe, where it seems to
be very generally believed that in those cases in which falsehood will on
the whole be conducive of greater good than the truth it is allowable to
employ it. But it is easy to see that, so far as we know that those around
us hold to this philosophy, all reasonable ground for confidence in
their statements is taken away; for we never can know, in respect to any
statement which they make, that the case is not one of those in which, for
reasons not manifest to us, they think it is expedient--that is, conducive
in some way to good--to state what is not true.
While, therefore, we must allow children a reasonable time to bring their
minds to a full sense of the obligation of making their words always
conform to what is true, instead of shaping them so as best to attain their
purposes for the time being--which is the course to which their earliest
natural instincts prompt them--and must deal gently and leniently with
their incipient failures, we must do all in our power to bring them forward
as fast as possible to the adoption of the very highest standard as their
rule of duty in this respect; inculcating it upon them, by example as well
as by precept, that we can not innocently, under any circumstances, to
escape any evil, or to gain any end, falsify our word. For there is no evil
so great, and no end to be attained so valuable, as to justify the adoption
of a principle which destroys all foundation for confidence between man and
man.