in a better way.

Lack of self-discipline, of intelligence, of patience, of
personal effort--these are the corner-stones on which corporal
punishment rests. I do not now refer to the system of flogging
employed by miserable people year in and year out at home, or,
particularly in schools, that of beating children outrageously,
or to the limits of brutality. I do not mean even the less
brutal blows administered by undisciplined teachers and
parents, who avenge themselves in excesses of passion or
fatigue or disgust,--blows which are simply the active
expression of a tension of nerves, a detestable evidence of the
want of self-discipline and selfculture. Still less do I refer
to the cruelties committed by monsters, sexual perverts, whose
brutal tendencies are stimulated by their disciplinary power
and who use it to force their victims to silence, as certain
criminal trials have shown.

I am only speaking of conscientious, amiable parents and
teachers who, with pain to themselves, fulfil what they regard
as their duty to the child. These are accustomed to adduce the
good effects of corporal discipline as a proof that it cannot
be dispensed with. The child by being whipped is, they say, not
only made good but freed from his evil character, and shows by
his whole being that this quick and summary method of
punishment has done more than talks, and patience, and the
slowly working penalties of experience. Examples are adduced to
prove that only this kind of punishment breaks down obstinacy,
cures the habit of lying and the like. Those who adopt this
system do not perceive that they have only succeeded, through