“The best way to comprehend is to do. What we learn the most thoroughly is what we learn to some extent by ourselves.”
370. Different Kinds of Punishments.—Kant has made a subtile analysis of the different qualities with which punishment may be invested. He distinguishes from physical punishment, moral punishment, which is the better. It consists in humiliating the pupil, in greeting him coolly, “in encouraging the disposition of the child to be honored and loved, that auxiliary of morality.” Physical punishments ought to be employed with precaution, “to the end that they may not entail servile dispositions.”
Another distinction is that of natural punishments and artificial punishments. The first are preferable to the second, because they are the very consequences of the faults which have been committed; “indigestion, for example, which a child brings on himself when he eats too much.” Another advantage of natural punishment, Kant justly remarks, “is that man submits to it all his life.”[192]
Finally, Kant divides punishments into negative and positive. The first are to be used for minor faults, and the others are to be reserved for the punishment of conduct that is absolutely bad.
Moreover, whatever punishment may be applied, Kant advises the teacher to avoid the appearance of feeling malice towards the pupil:—
“The punishments we inflict while exhibiting signs of anger have a wrong tendency.”
371. Religious Education.—At first view, we might be tempted to think that Kant has adopted the conclusions of Rousseau, and that, like him, he refuses to take an early occasion to inculcate in the child’s mind the notion of a Supreme Being:—
“Religious ideas always suppose some system of theology. Now, how are we to teach theology to the young, who, far from knowing the world, do not yet know themselves? How shall the young who do not yet know what duty is, be in a condition to comprehend an immediate duty towards God?”
To speak of religion to a young man, it would then be logical to wait till he is in a condition to form a clear and fixed conception of the nature of God. But it is impossible to do this, says Kant, because the young man lives in a society where he hears the name of the Divinity spoken at each moment, and where he takes part in continual observances of piety. It is better, then, to teach him at an early hour true religious notions, for fear that he may borrow from other men notions that are superstitious and false. In reality, Kant dissents from Rousseau only because, re-establishing the conditions of real life, he restores Émile to society, no longer keeping him in a fancied state of isolation. What a broad and noble way, moreover, of conceiving religious education! The best way of making clear to the mind of children the idea of God, is, according to Kant, to seek an analogy in the idea of a human father. It is necessary, moreover, that the conception of duty precede the conception of God; that morality precede, and that theology follow. Without morality, religion is but superstition; without morality, the pretended religious man is but a courtier, a suitor for divine favor.