TRUTHFULNESS
To produce the habit of truthfulness should be one of the major aims
of moral education. I do not mean truthfulness in speech only, but
also in thought; indeed, of the two, the latter seems to me the more
important. I prefer a person who lies with full consciousness of what
he is doing to a person who first subconsciously deceives himself
and then imagines that he is being virtuous and truthful. Indeed, no
man who thinks truthfully can believe that it is _always_ wrong to
speak untruthfully. Those who hold that a lie is always wrong have to
supplement this view by a great deal of casuistry and considerable
practice in misleading ambiguities, by means of which they deceive
without admitting to themselves that they are lying. Nevertheless, I
hold that the occasions when lying is justifiable are few--much fewer
than would be inferred from the practice of high-minded men. And almost
all the occasions which justify lying are occasions where power is
being used tyrannically, or where people are engaged in some harmful
activity such as war; therefore in a good social system they would be
even rarer than they are now.
Untruthfulness, as a practice, is almost always a product of fear. The
child brought up without fear will be truthful, not in virtue of a
moral effort, but because it will never occur to him to be otherwise.
The child who has been treated wisely and kindly has a frank look in
the eyes, and a fearless demeanour even with strangers; whereas the
child that has been subject to nagging or severity is in perpetual
terror of incurring reproof, and terrified of having transgressed some
rule whenever he has behaved in a natural manner. It does not at first
occur to a young child that it is possible to lie. The possibility of
lying is a discovery, due to observation of grown-ups quickened by
terror. The child discovers that grown-ups lie to him, and that it is
dangerous to tell them the truth; under these circumstances he takes to
lying. Avoid these incentives, and he will not think of lying.
But in judging whether children are truthful, a certain caution is
necessary. Children’s memories are very faulty, and they often do not
know the answer to a question when grown-up people think they do. Their
sense of time is very vague; a child under four will hardly distinguish
between yesterday and a week ago, or between yesterday and six hours
ago. When they do not know the answer to a question, they tend to say
yes or no according to the suggestion in your tone of voice. Again,
they are often talking in the dramatic character of some make-believe.
When they tell you solemnly that there is a lion in the back garden,
this is obvious; but in many cases it is quite easy to mistake play for
earnest. For all these reasons, a young child’s statements are often
objectively untrue, but without the slightest intention to deceive.
Indeed, children tend, at first, to regard grown-ups as omniscient,
and therefore incapable of being deceived. My boy (three and three
quarters) will ask me to tell him (for the pleasure of the story) what
occurred to him on some interesting occasion when I was not present;
I find it almost impossible to persuade him that I don’t know what
happened. Grown-up people get to know so many things in ways the child
does not understand, that he cannot set limits to their powers. Last
Easter, my boy was given a number of chocolate Easter eggs. We told him
that if he ate too much chocolate he would be sick, but, having told
him, we left him alone. He ate too much, and was sick. He came to me as
soon as the crisis was over, with a beaming face, saying, in a voice
almost of triumph, “I was sick, Daddy--Daddy told me I should be sick.”
His pleasure in the verification of a scientific law was astonishing.
Since then, it has been possible to trust him with chocolate, in spite
of the fact that he seldom has it; moreover he implicitly believes
everything we tell him about what food is good for him. There has been
no need of moral exhortation or punishment or fear in bringing about
this result. There has been need, at earlier stages, of patience and
firmness. He is nearing the age where it is usual for boys to steal
sweet things and lie about it. I dare say he will steal sometimes, but
I shall be surprised if he lies. When a child does lie, parents should
take themselves to task rather than him; they should deal with it by
removing its causes, and by explaining gently and reasonably why it is
better not to lie. They should not deal with it by punishment, which
only increases fear and therefore the motive for lying.
Rigid truthfulness in adults towards children is, of course, absolutely
indispensable if children are not to learn lying. Parents who teach
that lying is a sin, and who nevertheless are known to lie by their
children, naturally lose all moral authority. The idea of speaking the
truth to children is entirely novel; hardly anybody did it before the
present generation. I greatly doubt whether Eve told Cain and Abel the
truth about apples; I am convinced that she told them she had never
eaten anything that wasn’t good for her. It used to be the thing
for parents to represent themselves as Olympians, immune from human
passions and always actuated by pure reason. When they reproached
the children, they did it more in sorrow than in anger; however they
might scold, they were not “cross”, but talking to the children for
their good. Parents did not realize that children are astonishingly
clear-sighted: they do not understand all the solemn political reasons
for humbug, but despise it straightforwardly and simply. Jealousies
and envies of which you are unconscious will be evident to your child,
who will discount all your fine moral talk about the wickedness of the
objects of these passions. Never pretend to be faultless and inhuman;
the child will not believe you, and would not like you any the better
if he did. I remember vividly how, at a very early age, I saw through
the Victorian humbug and hypocrisy with which I was surrounded, and
vowed that, if I ever had children, I would not repeat the mistakes
that were being made with me. To the best of my ability, I am keeping
this vow.
Another form of lying, which is extremely bad for the young, is to
threaten punishments you do not mean to inflict. Dr. Ballard, in his
most interesting book on “The Changing School”,[13] has stated this
principle rather emphatically: “Don’t threaten. If you do, let nothing
stop you from carrying out your threat. If you say to a boy, ‘Do that
again and I’ll murder you’, and he does it again, then you must murder
him. If you don’t he will lose all respect for you” (p. 112). The
punishments threatened by nurses and ignorant parents in dealing with
infants are somewhat less extreme, but the same rule applies. Do not
insist, except for good reason; but when you have once begun insisting,
continue, however you may regret having embarked upon the battle. If
you threaten a punishment, let it be one that you are prepared to
inflict; never trust to luck that your bluff will not be called. It is
odd how difficult it is to get this principle understood by uneducated
people. It is particularly objectionable when they threaten something
terrifying, such as being locked up by the policeman or carried off
by the bogey-man. This produces first a state of dangerous nervous
terror and then a complete scepticism as to all statements and threats
by grown-up people. If you never insist without carrying the matter
through, the child soon learns that on such occasions resistance is
useless, and he obeys a mere word without giving further trouble. But
it is essential to the success of this method that you should not
insist unless there is some really strong reason for doing so.
Another undesirable form of humbug is to treat inanimate objects as if
they were alive. Nurses sometimes teach children, when they have hurt
themselves by bumping into a chair or table, to smack the offending
object and say, “naughty chair” or “naughty table”. This removes a most
useful source of natural discipline. Left to himself, the child soon
realizes that inanimate objects can only be manipulated by skill, not
by anger or cajolery. This is a stimulus to the acquisition of skill,
and a help in realizing the limits of personal power.
Lies about sex are sanctioned by time-honoured usage. I believe them to
be wholly and utterly bad, but I shall say no more on this subject now,
as I propose to devote a chapter to sex education.
Children who are not suppressed ask innumerable questions, some
intelligent, others quite the reverse. These questions are often
wearisome, and sometimes inconvenient. But they must be answered
truthfully, to the best of your ability. If the child asks you a
question connected with religion, say exactly what you think, even if
you contradict some other grown-up person who thinks differently. If
he asks you about death, answer him. If he asks you questions designed
to show that you are wicked or foolish, answer him. If he asks you
about war, or capital punishment, answer him. Do not put him off
with “you can’t understand that yet”, except in difficult scientific
matters, such as how electric light is made. And even then, make it
clear that the answer is a pleasure in store for him, as soon as he
has learnt rather more than he now knows. Tell him rather more than he
can understand, not rather less; the part he fails to understand will
stimulate his curiosity and his intellectual ambition.
Invariable truthfulness to a child reaps its reward in increased trust.
The child has a natural tendency to believe what you say, except when
it runs counter to a strong desire, as in the case of the Easter eggs
which I mentioned just now. A little experience of the truth of your
remarks even in these cases enables you to win belief easily and
without emphasis. But if you have been in the habit of threatening
consequences which did not happen, you will have to become more and
more insistent and terrifying, and in the end you will only produce
a state of nervous uncertainty. One day my boy wanted to paddle in a
stream, but I told him not to, because I thought there were bits of
broken crockery which would cut his feet. His desire was keen, so he
was sceptical about the crockery; but after I had found a piece and
shown him the sharp edge, he became entirely acquiescent. If I had
invented the crockery for my own convenience, I should have lost his
confidence. If I had not found any, I should have let him paddle.
In consequence of repeated experiences of this sort, he has almost
entirely ceased to be sceptical of my reasons.
We live in a world of humbug, and the child brought up without humbug
is bound to despise much that is commonly thought to deserve respect.
This is regrettable, because contempt is a bad emotion. I should
not call his attention to such matters, though I should satisfy his
curiosity whenever it turned towards them. Truthfulness is something
of a handicap in a hypocritical society, but the handicap is more than
outweighed by the advantages of fearlessness, without which no one
can be truthful. We wish our children to be upright, candid, frank,
self-respecting; for my part, I would rather see them fail with these
qualities than succeed by the arts of the slave. A certain native pride
and integrity is essential to a splendid human being, and where it
exists lying becomes impossible, except when it is prompted by some
generous motive. I would have my children truthful in their thoughts
and words, even if it should entail worldly misfortune, for something
of more importance than riches and honours is at stake.