The Punishment of Children

by Felix Adler

There is one question that touches the general subject of punishment and reward which is in some sense the most important and vital of all the questions we are considering. It throws a bright light or a deep shadow on the whole theory of life, according to the point of view we take.

I allude to the question whether the pleasures of the senses should be treated as a reward for the performance of duty. A parent says to his child: "You have been good to-day; you have studied your lessons; your deportment has been satisfactory: I will reward you by giving you sweetmeats, or by taking you on a holiday into the country." But what connection can there possibly be between the performance of duty and the physical pleasure enjoyed in eating sweetmeats? Is not the connection a purely arbitrary one? Does it not depend upon the notion that there is no intrinsic satisfaction in a moral act? We ought to see that it is radically wrong to make such enjoyments the reward of virtue; we ought to have the courage to make application of our better theories to the education of our children if we would develop in them the germs of a nobler, freer manhood and womanhood. I admit, indeed, that a child is not yet sufficiently developed to stand on its own feet morally, and that its virtuous inclinations need to be supported and assisted; but we can give it this assistance by means of our approbation or disapprobation.

To be in disgrace with its parents ought to be for a child the heaviest penalty. To have their favor should be its highest reward. But simply because a child is most easily taken on the side of its animal instincts, are we to appeal to it on that side? Should it not be our aim to raise the young child above the mere desire for physical gratification, to prevent it from attaching too much importance to such pleasures?

The conduct of many parents, however, I fear, tends to foster artificially that lower nature in their offspring which it should rather be their aim to repress. By their method of bestowing extraneous rewards, parents contribute to pervert the character of their children in earliest infancy, giving it a wrong direction from the start.

But, it may be objected, is there not a wholesome truth contained in Saint Paul's saying that "he who will not work, neither shall he eat"? Is not our conscience offended when we see a person enjoying the pleasures of life who will perform none of its more serious duties? And should we not all agree that, in a certain sense, virtue entitles one to pleasure, and the absence of virtue ought to preclude one from pleasure?

To meet this point let us dwell for a moment on the following considerations. Man is endowed with a variety of faculties, and a different type of pleasure or satisfaction arises from the exercise of each. Pleasure, in general, may be defined as the feeling which results from successful exercise of any of our faculties—physical, mental or moral. A successful rider takes pleasure in horsemanship, an athlete in the lifting of weights. The greater an artist's mastery over his art, the greater the pleasure he derives from it. The more complex and difficult the problems which a scholar is able to resolve, the more delight does he find in study. The same is true of the moral nature. The more a man succeeds in harmonizing his inner life, and in helping to make the principles of social harmony prevail in the world about him, the more satisfaction will he derive from the exercise of virtue.

But the main fact which we are bound to remember is that it is impossible to pay for the exercise of any one faculty by the pleasure derived from the exercise of another; that each faculty is legitimately paid only in its own coin. If you ask a horseman who has just returned from an exhilarating ride what compensation he expects to receive for the exercise he has taken, he will probably look at you in blank amazement, with grave misgivings as to your sanity. If you ask a scientist what reward he expects to receive for the pursuit of knowledge, he will answer you, if he is an expert in the use of his intellect, that he expects no ulterior reward of any kind; that not positive knowledge so much as the sense of growth in the attainment of knowledge is the highest reward which he can imagine. And the same answer you will get from a person who is expert in the use of his moral faculty, namely, that not virtue so much as growth in virtue, not the results achieved by the exercise of the faculty, but the successful exercise itself is the supreme compensation.

I have used the word "expert" in all these cases, and precisely "there's the rub." The reason why many persons cannot get themselves to believe that the exercise of the mental and moral faculties is a sufficient reward is because they are not expert, because they have not penetrated far enough along the lines of knowledge and virtue to obtain the satisfactions of them. But the same applies to the tyro in any pursuit. A rider who has not yet acquired a firm seat in the saddle will hardly derive much pleasure from horseback exercise. An awkward, clumsy dancer, who cannot keep step, will get no pleasure from dancing. There is no help for the tyro, no matter in what direction he aims at excellence, except to go on trying until he becomes expert.

I have said that each faculty is sovereign in its own sphere, that each provides its proper satisfactions within itself and does not borrow them from the domain of any of the others. Nevertheless we are constrained to admit the important truth that is contained in the saying of Saint Paul. And this truth, it seems to me, may be formulated in the words that, while physical pleasure is not the reward of virtue, virtue ought to be regarded as the condition sine qua non of the enjoyment of physical pleasures—at least, so far as the distribution of such pleasures is within the power of the educator or of society.

This proposition depends on the difference in rank that subsists between our faculties, of which some are superior and others inferior, the moral and intellectual faculties rightfully occupying the top of the scale. We inwardly rebel when we see the indolent and self-indulgent living in luxury and affluence. And this not because the enjoyments which such persons command are the proper compensations of virtue, or because physical pain would be the proper punishment of their moral faults, but because we demand that the lower faculties shall not be exercised at the expense and to the neglect of the higher, that the legitimate rank and order of our faculties shall not be subverted.