stand in no relation with the realities of life. I mean, above
all, what are still called means of education, instead of means
of torture,--blows.

Many people of to-day defend blows, maintaining that they are
milder means of punishment than the natural consequences of an
act; that blows have the strongest effect on the memory, which
effect becomes permanent through association of ideas.

But what kinds of association? Is it not with physical pain and
shame? Gradually, step by step, this method of training and
discipline has been superseded in all its forms. The movement
to abolish torture, imprisonment, and corporal punishment
failed for a long time owing to the conviction that they were
indispensable as methods of discipline. But the child, people
answer, is still an animal, he must be brought up as an animal.
Those who talk in this way know nothing of children nor of
animals. Even animals can be trained without striking them, but
they can only be trained by men who have become men themselves.

Others come forward with the doctrine that terror and pain have
been the best means of educating mankind, so the child must
pursue the same road as humanity. This is an utter absurdity.
We should also, on this theory, teach our children, as a
natural introduction to religion, to practice fetish worship.
If the child is to reproduce all the lower development stages
of the race, he would be practically depressed beneath the
level which he has reached physiologically and psychologically
through the common inheritance of the race. If we have
abandoned torture and painful punishments for adults, while