they are retained for children, it is because we have not yet
seen that their soul life so far as a greater and more subtle
capacity for suffering is concerned has made the same progress
as that of adult mankind. The numerous cases of child suicide
in the last decade were often the result of fear of corporal
punishment; or have taken place after its administration. Both
soul and body are equally affected by this practice. Where this
is not the result, blows have even more dangerous consequences.
They tend to dull still further the feeling of shame, to
increase the brutality or cowardice of the person punished. I
once heard a child pointed out in a school as being so unruly
that it was generally agreed he would be benefited by a
flogging. Then it was discovered that his father's flogging at
home had made him what he was. If statistics were prepared of
ruined sons, those who had been flogged would certainly be more
numerous than those who had been pampered.

Society has gradually given up employing retributive
punishments because people have seen that they neither awaken
the feeling of guilt, nor act as a deterrent, but on the
contrary retribution applied by equal to equal brutalises the
ideas of right, hardens the temper, and stimulates the victim
to exercise the same violence towards others that has been
endured by himself. But other rules are applied to the
psychological processes of the child. When a child strikes his
small sister the mother strikes him and believes that he will
see and understand the difference between the blows he gets and
those he gives, that he will see that the one is a just
punishment and the other vicious conduct. But the child is a
sharp logician and feels that the action is just the same,