The vividness of this fancy resembles the
pseudo-hallucinations of Kandinsky. Two sisters used to say, "Let us
play we are sisters," as if this made the relation more real.
Cagliostro found adolescent boys particularly apt for training for his
exhibition of phrenological impostures, illustrating his thirty-five
faculties. "He lied when he confessed he had lied," said a young
Sancho Panza, who had believed the wild tales of another boy who later
admitted their falsity. Sir James Mackintosh, near puberty, after
reading Roman history, used to fancy himself the Emperor of
Constantinople, and carried on the administration of the realm for
hours at a time. His fancies never quite became convictions, but
adolescence is the golden age of this kind of dreamery and reverie
which supplements reality and totalizes our faculties, and often gives
a special charm to dramatic activities and in morbid cases to
simulation and dissimulation. It is a state from which some of the
bad, but far more of the good qualities of life and mind arise. These
are the noble lies of poetry, art, and idealism, but their pedagogic
regime must be wise.
Again with children as with savages, truth depends largely upon
personal likes and dislikes.
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