CHARACTER-DIVERS—continued.
"Let the remedies employed be adapted to the complaint and to the constitution of the patient, and be careful that in curing one disease you do not sow the seeds of another more dangerous."
One of the duties of the character-divers is to suggest, and often to carry out, the measures for curing the child, for in our planet the mode of correcting faults is a matter of great solicitude, lest the means adopted, instead of checking and eradicating, tend to confirm and develop the evil tendency, or, it may be, implant other evils more fatal than those eradicated.
The remedies employed for curing the boy's faults vary with his temperament and general characteristics. The same fault would be treated very differently in the stupid and in the intelligent boy. Where there was difficulty of impression, the labour would be like working on stone, whilst the lightest touch and mildest measures will often suffice with the intelligent.
The remedies vary again with the kind, degree, and cause of the fault: take for instance the ordinary fault of laziness. This would be treated very differently when it arose from mental defects—from a tendency to love other things, great or grovelling, or from a sluggish or overactive digestion.
I may here mention that a general feature in the correction of faults is the absence of violent punishment. We wish to raise and not degrade our children, and perhaps implant the seeds of cruelty. We do not correct even our animals by blows. Horses, for instance, are never struck. Whips, with a small thong at the ends, are used only to flourish and to make sounds which the horse knows, but they are not used to strike the animal. Other modes are employed for curing viciousness, each according to the nature of the vice. In the case of a kicking horse, he is placed in a machine which is closed on him, the machine being so constructed that when shut it effectually prevents the animal moving, and he is kept there in the same position for hours. If, when taken out, he again kicks he is placed back again immediately. The process is repeated when necessary over and over again, until the very sight of the machine will completely cow the animal, and he is effectually cured.
The laws are very severe against those who would ill-treat an animal, but there is now no need to put them in force.
We never punish by the imposition of tasks, our aim being to inculcate the love of study, and encourage the child to regard his work as a favour and a privilege. On the contrary we now punish the student rather by taking away the old than by imposing new school work; and this is so effected that the boy, though at first delighted, soon thirsts to resume his studies.
In many cases the pupil is not allowed even to know that he is punished,—i.e., why the discipline is changed,—lest he should become attached to a fault for which he has suffered and, as it were, paid dearly; lest, too, the excitement of eluding detection should make it pleasurable to transgress when the immediate pressure is removed, and he should thus become schooled in untruthfulness and deceit.
The character-divers generally effect the child's correction by gentleness, and eventually bringing him to loathe the bad and love the good. Time, labour, and attention are bestowed unsparingly, and, however small the germ, the evil tendency is never left until, when this is possible, it is completely eradicated. In certain cases, where the footprint of nature is too firmly impressed, the efforts are continued until other and opposing qualities have been developed, and the moral patient has acquired such control over himself as to be able, in moments of temptation and impulse, to dominate the disturbing propensity.