this momentarily effective means, in repressing the external
expression of an evil will. They have not succeeded in
transforming the will itself. It requires constant vigilance,
daily self-discipline, to create an ever higher capacity for
the discovery of intelligent methods. The fault that is
repressed is certain to appear on every occasion when the child
dares to show it. The educator who finds in corporal punishment
a short way to get rid of trouble, leads the child a long way
round, if we have the only real development in view, namely
that which gradually strengthens the child's capacity for
self-control.

I have never heard a child over three years old threatened with
corporal punishment without noticing that this wonderfully
moral method had an equally bad influence on parents and
children. The same can be said of milder kinds of folly,
coaxing children by external rewards. I have seen some children
coaxed to take baths and others compelled by threats. But in
neither case was their courage, or self-control, or strength of
will increased. Only when one is able to make the bath itself
attractive is that energy of will developed that gains a
victory over the feeling of fear or discomfort and produces a
real ethical impression, viz., that virtue is its own reward.
Wherever a child is deterred from a bad habit or fault by
corporal punishment, a real ethical result is not reached. The
child has only learnt to fear an unpleasant consequence, which
lacks real connection with the thing itself, a consequence it
well knows could have been absent. Such fear is as far removed
as heaven from the conviction that the good is better than the
bad. The child soon becomes convinced that the disagreeable