but the fear of punishment, the hope of forgiveness, importunity,
the difficulty of answering, wrings from them as many confessions
as you want; and you think you have convinced them when you have
only wearied or frightened them.

What does it all come to? In the first place, by imposing on them
a duty which they fail to recognise, you make them disinclined to
submit to your tyranny, and you turn away their love; you teach
them deceit, falsehood, and lying as a way to gain rewards or escape
punishment; then by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive
under the cloak of an apparent one, you yourself put into their
hands the means of deceiving you, of depriving you of a knowledge
of their real character, of answering you and others with empty
words whenever they have the chance. Laws, you say, though binding
on conscience, exercise the same constraint over grown-up men. That
is so, but what are these men but children spoilt by education?
This is just what you should avoid. Use force with children and
reasoning with men; this is the natural order; the wise man needs
no laws.

Treat your scholar according to his age. Put him in his place from
the first, and keep him in it, so that he no longer tries to leave
it. Then before he knows what goodness is, he will be practising
its chief lesson. Give him no orders at all, absolutely none. Do
not even let him think that you claim any authority over him. Let
him only know that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition
and yours puts him at your mercy; let this be perceived, learned,
and felt. Let him early find upon his proud neck, the heavy yoke
which nature has imposed upon us, the heavy yoke of necessity, under
which every finite being must bow. Let him find this necessity in