No one who has been beaten for lying learns by it to love
truth. The accuracy of this principle is illustrated by adults
who despise corporal punishment in their childhood yet continue
to tell untruths by word and deed. Fear may keep the child from
technical untruth, but fear also produces untrustworthiness.
Those who have been beaten in childhood for lying have often
suffered a serious injury immeasurably greater than the direct
lie. The truest men I ever knew lie voluntarily and
involuntarily; while others who might never be caught in a lie
are thoroughly false.

This corruption of personality begins frequently at the
tenderest age under the influence of early training. Children
are given untrue motives, half-true information; are
threatened, admonished. The child's will, thought, and feeling
are oppressed; against this treatment dishonesty is the
readiest method of defence. In this way educators who make
truth their highest aim, make children untruthful. I watched a
child who was severely punished for denying something he had
unconsciously done, and noted how under the influence of this
senseless punishment he developed extreme dissimulation.

Truthfulness requires above everything unbroken determination;
and many nervous little liars need nourishing food and life in
the open air, not blows. A great artist, one of the few who
live wholly according to the modern principles of life, said to
me on one occasion: "My son does not know what a lie is, nor
what a blow is. His step-brother, on the other hand, lied when
he came into our house; but lying did not work in the