On much the same level of moral obliquity are those cases where a child will say the opposite of what he is told, turning authoritative utterances upside down. A quaint instance is quoted by Compayré from Guyau. Guyau’s little boy (age not given) was overheard saying to himself: “Papa parle mal, il a dit _sevette_, bébé parle bien, il dit _serviette_”. Such reversals are a kind of play too: the child not unnaturally gets tired now and then of being told that he is wrong, and for the moment imagines himself right and his elders wrong, immensely enjoying the idea. A graver-looking case presents itself when an ‘untruth’ is uttered in answer to a question. C. on being asked by his mother who told him something, answered, ‘Dolly’. ‘False, and knowingly false,’ somebody will say, especially when he learns that the depraved youngster instantly proceeded to laugh. But let us look a little closer. The question had raised in C.’s small mind the idea that somebody had told him. This is a process of ‘suggestion’ which, as we shall see presently, sways a child’s mind as it sways that of the hypnotised adult. And there close by the child was dolly, and the child’s make-believe includes, as we all know, much important communication with dolly. What more natural than that the idea should at once seize his imagination? But the laugh? Well I am ready to admit that there was a touch of playful defiance here, of young impishness. The expression on the mother’s face showed him that his bold absurd fancy had produced its half-startling, half-amusing effect; and there is nothing your little actor likes more than this after-effect of startling you. But more, it gave him at the same instant a glimpse of the outside look of his fancy, of the unreality of the untruth; and the laugh probably had in it the delight of the little rebel, of the naughty rogue who loves now and then to set law at defiance. A quick vivid fancy, a childish passion for acting a part, these backed by a strong impulse to astonish, and a turn for playful rebellion, seem to me to account for this and other similar varieties of early misstatement. Naughty they no doubt are in a measure; but is it not just that playing at being naughty which has in it nothing really bad, and is removed _toto cœlo_ from downright honest lying? I speak the more confidently as to C.’s case as I happen to know that he was in his serious moods particularly, one might almost say pedantically, truthful.