Applying this idea to the case of children, I think it would be perfectly proper to deny a child that has failed to study its lessons or has given other occasion for serious displeasure, the privilege of going on a holiday to the country or enjoying its favorite sports. Everything, however, will depend—as so much in education does depend—on the manner; in this instance on what we imply in our denial rather than on what we expressly state.
The denial, it seems to me, should be made on the ground that there is a proper order in which the faculties are to be exercised; that the higher, the mental, faculties should be exercised first, and that he who will not aim at the higher satisfactions, neither shall he, so far as we can prevent, enjoy the lower. On the other hand, by making physical pleasures—sports, games and the like—the reward of study, we exalt these satisfactions so as to make them seem the higher, so as to make the satisfactions of knowledge appear of lesser value compared with the satisfactions of the senses.
In an ideal community every one of our faculties would be brought into play in turn, without our ever being tempted to regard the pleasures of the one as compensation for the exercise of the other. The human soul has often been compared to an instrument with many strings. Perhaps it may not be amiss to compare it to an orchestra. In this orchestra the violins represent the intellectual faculties. They lead the rest. Then there are the flute-notes of love, the trumpet tones of ambition, the rattling drums and cymbals of the passions and appetites. Each of these instruments is to come in its proper place, while the moral plan of life is the musical composition which they all assist in rendering.
What we should try to banish is the vicious idea of extraneous reward, the notion that man is an animal whose object in life is to eat and drink, to possess gold and fine garments, and to gratify every lower desire, and that he can be brought to labor only on condition that he may obtain such pleasures. What we should impress instead is the notion that labor itself is satisfying—manual labor, mental labor, moral labor—and that the more difficult the labor, the higher the compensating satisfactions.
II
I have thus far endeavored to combat the notion that physical pleasure should be offered as a reward for virtue, and physical pain inflicted as a punishment for moral faults. Now we are in a position to apply this conclusion to some special questions which it is proposed to take up for consideration. The first of these relates to corporal punishment.
1. Corporal Punishment
It was in that period of history which is so justly called the Dark Ages that the lurid doctrine of hell as a place for the eternal bodily torture of the wicked haunted men's minds, and the same mediæval period witnessed the most horrible examples of corporal punishment in the schools and in the homes.