Who ever wishe to correct the illusions of childhood? All of us can look back at a time when we believed that our own parents were perfect, and believed that the whole grown up world was perfect. The child knows indeed that there are bad people in the world, but they have nothing to do with with the world in which he dwells.
When he thinks about them he is confused how to find room for them. We have heard of a child so moderate that he only produced two perfect men, besides the father to confute the doctorine of original sin. But most of us would have brought forth a much larger body of witnesses on his side.
Now, no one would say that you gave a child a truer view of his father and mother if you made him understand that there were two very faulty beings, with as much to repent of as the naughtiest of his playmates. It is not that truth had better be sacrificed to love; We do somtimes feel that of these illusions in later life, and anyonewho will put the two states of mind side by side will at once see their differences.
It is that the illusions is actually a truer feeling than any that you could substitute for it. It is the natural healthful condition of mind of a child, the one which put him into his place with regard to his elders, which enables them to do their part toward him and his part to them.
It bears every test of truth, except that of being independent of position. It is the truth for a particular stage of development