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 rot 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 lead

ing 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 pur pose whatever, right for him to falsify it.

A different opinion, I am aware, prevails very extensívely 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 princiciple which destroys all foundation for confidence between man and man.

CHAPTER XVII.

JUDGMENT AND REASONING.

It is a very unreasonable thing for parents to expect young children to be reasonable. Being reasonable in one's conduct or wishes implies the taking into account of those bearings and relations of an act which are more remote and less obvious, in contradistinction from being governed exclusively by those which are immediate and near. Now, it is not reasonable to expect children to be influenced by these remote considerations, simply because in them the faculties by which they are brought forward into the mind. and invested with the attributes of reality are not yet developed. These faculties are all in a nascent or formative state, and it is as idle to expect them, while thus immature, to fulfill their functions for any practical purpose, as it would be to expect a baby to expend the strength of its little arms in performing any useful labor.

Progress of Mental Development.

The mother sometimes, when she looks upon her infant lying in her arms, and observes the intentness with which he seems to gaze upon objects in the room-upon the bright light of the window or of the lamp, or upon the pictures on the wall-wonders what he is thinking of. The truth probably is that he is not thinking at all; he is simply seeing that is to say, the light from external objects is entering his eyes and producing images upon his sensorium, and that is all. He sees only. There might have been a similar image of the light in his mind the day be