What a painful and terrifying beating does a child often get for disobeying some arbitrary command uttered by the one over him. To the child, "Don't do this," "Don't go there," "Stand up straight," and "Say this" are commands that carry with them court martial and its severe and unrelenting punishment.
Remember this: The child will respond to kindness and love more readily and directly than to force and unwarranted discipline. It is purely a question of whether your feelings are actuated by these impulses.
If you have become mentally strong enough to restrain your impulses to strike your child, do not substitute other means to "punish" him. Changing the method of brutally inflicting physical pain upon your child to some other means, though less repulsive, is still obnoxious and harmful.
If you are unable to convince your child, by persuasion, example or otherwise, that you are right and that the child should follow your instruction, then by all means, let it become the victor in the contest.
Fear—fear of pain, fear in every form—controls our lives, and shapes the courses of our puny destinies.
VIII
The mind, through fear of death, is capable of suffering, within a few moments, the tortures of an eternity, although to accomplish death, Nature may require only a few minutes. The extent of the mind's capability for suffering is beyond compare.
Nature has been distinctly conspicuous in imbuing us not only with grave doubts and uncertainties, but also with an unshakable fear regarding death. In the deepest moments of despair, when living has absolutely no attraction and life becomes a burden and a menace, we fight desperately, and without abatement, for this narrow, worthless thread of existence.