Discipline is not preserved in the army by the dread of the "cat," nor of the cells. It is kept by the fact that the wildest and most reckless man knows that he must obey, that the whole physical and moral force of the army is united to insist upon obedience.
If he disobey an order he will be punished. He does not care a snap of his fingers for the punishment. But he knows that after he has done his punishment drill the order will be repeated, and that he will be obliged to obey. He knows that the sentiment of the army is against him until he does obey.
I have seen an officer get a battalion into a mess on parade, and then lose his temper and bully the men.. And I have seen another officer on the same day drill the men and get them to work like a machine. The first officer did not know how to give the orders. The second knew his business, was sure that he did know it, and so let the men feel that he knew it.
It is with parents as with those two officers. The one who knows his duty, and does it properly, never has any occasion to lose his temper.
It is time Solomon's rod followed the witches' broom. It is time the "cat," and the chain, and the cell, and the convict's dress, and the oakum and the skilly, and the gallows followed the rack and the thumbscrew and the faggot and the wheel. It is time the leaders of the people were taught to lead. It is time the educated and the uneducated were given some real education. It is time that tyranny, cruelty, self-righteousness, superstition, and the bad old conventions of an ignorant past, gave place to reason, to science, to manhood.
"But," the penal moralist will demand, "if you propose to abolish blame and punishment, what do you propose to put in their place?"
And I answer, "Justice, knowledge, and reason—in fact, an improved environment."
The cause of most of our social and moral troubles is ignorance.
By ignorance I do not mean illiteracy only: there are many classical scholars who are really ignorant men. No: I mean ignorance of human nature and of the essentials to a happy and wholesome human life. It is this kind of ignorance which divides the people into two classes: rich and poor—masters and slaves. It is this kind of ignorance which causes men to sacrifice health, happiness, and virtue for the sake of vanity, and idleness, and wealth. It is the kind of ignorance which keeps twelve millions of people in a rich and fertile country always on the verge of destitution. It is this kind of ignorance which saddles mankind with the cost of armies, and fleets, and prisons, and police. It is this kind of ignorance which breeds millions of criminals, and educates them in crime. It is this kind of ignorance which splits a great nation into castes, and sects, and makes the realisation of the glorious ideal of human brotherhood impossible. It is this kind of ignorance which drives professing Christians to neglect the teachings of Christ. It is this kind of ignorance which makes possible the millionaire, the aristocrat, the sweater, the tramp, the thief, the degenerate, and the slave. It is this kind of ignorance which keeps the children hungry, drives the men to drunkenness, and the women to shame. It is this kind of ignorance which is answerable for all evil environments from which hate, and greed, and poverty, and immorality spring, like weeds from a rank and neglected soil.
We cannot get rid of this most deadly form of ignorance by means of blame and punishment. There is only one way to drive out ignorance, and that is by spreading knowledge.