ng the truth when one has such a kind
father."

I formerly divided untruthfulness into unwilling, shameless, and
imaginative lies. A short time ago I ran across a much better division
of lying; first "cold" lies, that is, fully conscious untruthfulness
which must be punished, and "hot" lies; the expression of an excited
temperament or of a vigorous fancy. I agree with the author of this
distinction that the last should not be punished but corrected, though
not with a pedantic rule of thumb measure, based on how much it exceeds
or falls short of truth. It is to be cured by ridicule, a dangerous
method of education in general, but useful when one observes that this
type of untruthfulness threatens to develop into real untrustworthiness.
In dealing with these faults we are very strict towards children, so
strict that no lawyer, no politician, no journalist, no poet, could
exercise his profession if the same standard were applied to them as to
children.

The white lie is, as a French scientist has shown, partly caused by pure
morbidness, partly through some defect in the conception. It is due
to an empty space, a dead point in memory, or in consciousness, that
produces a defective idea or gives one no idea at all of what has
happened. In the affairs of everyday life the adults are often mistaken
as to their intentions or acts. They may have forgotten about their
actions, and it requires a strong effort of memory to call them back
into their minds; or they suggest to themselves that they have done, or
not done, something. In all of these cases, if they were forced to give
a distinct answer, they would lie. In every case of this kind, where a
child is concerned, the lie is assumed to be a conscious one, and when
on being submitted to a strict cross-examination, he hesitates, becomes
confused, and blushes, it is looked upon as a proof that he knows he has
been telling an untruth, although as a rule there has been no instance
of untruthfulness, except the finally extorted confession from the child
that he has lied. Yet in all these complicated psychological problems,
corporal punishment is treated as a solution.

The child who never hears lying at home, who does not see exaggerated
weight placed on small, merely external things, who is not made cowardly
by fear, who hears conscious lies always spoken of with contempt, will
get out of the habit of untruthfulness simply by psychological means.
First he will find that untruthfu