th them the means for a more direct,
less difficult, less tedious solution of the problems of life.

The child in whose development the various steps of phylogeny are
recapitulated shows this tendency to deception, to simulation, and
dissimulation in a very pronounced degree. Lombroso, who was the first
to demonstrate that so-called moral insanity is but a continuation of
childhood without the adjunct of education, cites many facts, not
excepting his own example, to show that the child is naturally drawn to
fraud, to deception, to simulation. The child simulates either because
of fear of injury and punishment or because of vanity or jealousy.
Ferrari,[3] in his excellent work on juvenile delinquency, discusses the
various motives for deception and malingering in the child. According to
him, deception is, first of all, instinctive with the child. It
malingers because of weakness, playfulness, imitation, egotism,
jealousy, envy, and revenge. Deception frequently forms for it the only
available weapon of defense against the parents and teachers.

Penta[4] cites many well-authenticated cases of malingering of mental
symptoms in children. Of special interest is Malmstein's case of a girl
of eight years who, in order to deceive her father and render him less
severe in his treatment of her, and in order to gain the sympathy of
those in the house who were in the habit of giving her sweets, feigned
complete muteness for five months, after which time, no longer able to
resist the desire to speak, she went into the woods, where, believing
herself unobserved, she began to sing. St. Augustine, in his
confessions, speaks of his childhood in the following manner: "I cheated
with innumerable lies my teachers and parents from a love of play and
for the purpose of being amused."[B] Penta, after a thorough discussion
of the subject of malingering in children, comes to the conclusion that
children use all the diverse forms of fraud, from simple lying to
simulation, much more frequently than is believed or known. It may with
them as with some lower animals simply be an instinctive playfulness, a
habit or a necessity, as a weapon consciously and voluntarily wielded.
This inherent tendency is, of course, modified to a considerable extent
by the environment under which the child was brought up. Finally, the
independence which the growing human being acquires from this form of
reaction is in direct proportion to the ability he has acquired thro