THE 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 which filled 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 yard was 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 fancy he 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 it to 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.
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 to mental 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 coördination of 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 accuracy of 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 is as
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 than frequent 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.