even a reform in spelling, would prevail, illustrated in a journal devoted to the
affairs of this realm—all these developed in his imagination, where they existed
with great reality for years. The vividness of this fancy resembles the pseudo-
hallucinations of Kandinsky. Two sisters used to say, "Let us play we are
sisters," as if this made the relation more real. Cagliostro found adolescent boys
particularly apt for training for his exhibition of phrenological impostures,
illustrating his thirty-five faculties. "He lied when he confessed he had lied," said
a young Sancho Panza, who had believed the wild tales of another boy who later
admitted their falsity. Sir James Mackintosh, near puberty, after reading Roman
history, used to fancy himself the Emperor of Constantinople, and carried on the
administration of the realm for hours at a time. His fancies never quite became
convictions, but adolescence is the golden age of this kind of dreamery and
reverie which supplements reality and totalizes our faculties, and often gives a
special charm to dramatic activities and in morbid cases to simulation and
dissimulation. It is a state from which some of the bad, but far more of the good
qualities of life and mind arise. These are the noble lies of poetry, art, and
idealism, but their pedagogic regime must be wise.
Again with children as with savages, truth depends largely upon personal likes
and dislikes. Truth is for friends, and lies are felt to be quite right for enemies.
The young often see no wrong in lies their friends wish told, but may collapse
and confess when asked if they would have told their mother thus. Boys best
keep up complotted lies and are surer to own up if caught than girls. It is harder
to cheat in school with a teacher who is liked. Friendships are cemented by
confidences and secrets, and when they wane, promises not to tell weaken in
their validity. Lies to the priest, and above all to God, are the worst. All this
makes special attention to friendships, leaders, and favorites important, and
suggests the high value of science for general veracity.
The worst lies, perhaps, are those of selfishness. They ease children over many
hard places in life, and are convenient covers for weakness and vice. These lies
are, on the whole, judging from our census, most prevalent. They are also most
corrupting and hard to correct. All bad habits particularly predispose to the lie of
concealment; for those who do wrong are almost certain to have recourse to
falsehood, and the sense of meanness thus slowly bred, which may be met by
appeals to honor, for so much of which school life is responsible, is often
mitigated by the fact that falsehoods are frequently resorted to in moments of
danger and excitement, are easily forgotten when it is over, and rarely rankle.
These, even more than the pseudomaniac cases mentioned later, grow rankly in