Locke: Truth

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 139 Truth. Having laid the foundations of virtue in a true notion of a God, such as the creed wisely teaches, as far as his age is capable, and by accustoming him to pray to him, the next thing to be taken care of, is to keep him exactly to speaking of truth, and by all the ways imaginable inclining him to be good-natured. Let him know, that twenty faults are sooner to be forgiven, than the straining of truth to cover any one by an excuse. And to teach him betimes to love and be good-natured to others, is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man; all injustice generally springing from too great love of ourselves and too little of others.

This is all I shall say of this matter in general, and is enough for laying the first foundations of virtue in a child. As he grows up, the tendency of his natural inclination must be observed; which, as it inclines him, more than is convenient, on one or the other side, from the right path of virtue, ought to have proper remedies applied. For few of Adam's children are so happy as not to he born with some bias in their natural temper, which it is the business of education either to take off, or counterbalance: but to enter into particulars of this would be beyond the design of this short treatise of education. I intend not a discourse of all the virtues and vices, and how each virtue is to he attained, and every particular vice by its peculiar remedies cured though I have mentioned some of the most ordinary faults, and the ways to be used in correcting them.

§ 140 Wisdom. Wisdom I take, in the popular acceptation, for a man's managing his business ably and with foresight in this world. This is the product of a good natural temper, application of mind and experience together, and not to be taught children. The greatest thing that in them can be done towards it, is to hinder them, as much as may be, from being cunning; which, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from it that can be: and as an ape, for the likeness it has to a man, wanting what really should make him so, is by so much the uglier. Cunning is only the want of understanding; which, because it cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick and circumvention; and the mischief of it is, a cunning trick helps but once, but hinders ever after. No cover was ever made either so big or so fine as to hide itself. Nobody was ever so cunning, as to conceal their being so: and when they are once discovered, every body is shy, every body distrustful of crafty men; and all the world forwardly join to oppose and defeat them: whilst the open, fair, wise man has every body to make way for him, and goes directly to his business. To accustom a child to have true notions of things, and not to be satisfied till he has them; to raise his mind to great and worthy thoughts; and to keep him at a distance from falsehood and cunning, which has always a broad mixture of falsehood in it, is the fittest preparation of a child for wisdom, which being learned from time, experience, and observation, and an acquaintance with men, their tempers and designs [is] not to be expected in the ignorance and inadvertency of childhood, or the inconsiderate heat and unwariness of youth: all that can be done towards it, during this unripe age, is, as I have said, to accustom them to truth and submission to reason; and, as much as may be, to reflection on their own actions.