recommended with children while they are young will find that such methods
are far more prompt in their action and more effectual in immediate results
than they would suppose, and that they will be the means of establishing
the only kind of authority that is really worthy of the name more rapidly
than any other.

The special point, however, with a view to which these illustrations are
introduced, is, as has been already remarked, that penalties of this
nature, and imposed in this spirit, are not vindictive, but simply remedial
and reformatory. They are not intended to satisfy the sense of justice for
what is past, but only to secure greater safety and happiness in time to
come.

_The Element of Invariableness_.

Punishments may be very light and gentle in their character, provided they
are certain to follow the offense. It is in their _certainty_, and not in
their _severity_, that the efficiency of them lies. Very few children are
ever severely burnt by putting their fingers into the flame of a candle.
They are effectually taught not to put them in by very slight burnings,
on account of the _absolute invariableness_ of the result produced by the
contact.

Mothers often do not understand this. They attempt to cure some habitual
fault by scoldings and threats, and declarations of what they will
certainly do "next time," and perhaps by occasional acts of real severity
in cases of peculiar aggravation, instead of a quiet, gentle, and
comparatively trifling infliction in _every instance_ of the fault, which
would be altogether more effectual.