innocence

thumb|200px|William-Adolphe Bouguereau|Bouguereau's ''L'Innocence: [[Women, young children, and lambs are all symbols of innocence.]] thumb|Innocence'' by Pierre Paul Prud'hon, Innocence is a lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence is prior to the sense of legal guilt and is a primal emotion connected with the sense of self. It is often confused as being the opposite of the guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime. In other contexts, it is a lack of experience.

==In relation to knowledge== Innocence can imply lesser experience in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting an optimistic view of the world, in particular one where the lack of wrongdoing stems from a lack of knowledge, whereas wrongdoing comes from a lack of knowledge in children. Subjects such as crime and sexuality may be especially considered. This connotation may be connected with a popular false etymology explaining "innocent" as meaning "not knowing" (Latin — to know, learn). The actual etymology is from general negation prefix and the Latin , "to harm".