ten-year-old child added to the anecdote: "It is no trouble
telling 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