accompaniment is no necessary result of the action, that by
greater cleverness the punishment might have been avoided. Thus
the physical punishment increases deception not morality. In
the history of humanity the effect of the teaching about hell
and fear of hell illustrates the sort of morality produced in
children's souls by corporal punishment, that inferno of
childhood. Only with the greatest trouble, slowly and
unconsciously, is the conviction of the superiority of the good
established. The good comes to be seen as more productive of
happiness to the individual himself and his environment. So the
child learns to love the good. By teaching the child that
punishment is a consequence drawn upon oneself he learns to
avoid the cause of punishment.

Despite all the new talk of individuality the greatest mistake
in training children is still that of treating the "child" as
an abstract conception, as an inorganic or personal material to
be formed and transformed by the hands of those who are
educating him. He is beaten, and it is thought that the whole
effect of the blow stops at the moment when the child is
prevented from being bad. He has, it is thought, a powerful
reminder against future bad behaviour. People no not suspect
that this violent interference in the physical and psychical
life of the child may have lifelong effects. As far back as
forty years ago, a writer showed that corporal punishment had
the most powerful somatic stimulative effects. The flagellation
of the Middle Ages is known to have had such results; and if I
could publish what I have heard from adults as to the effect of
corporal punishment on them, or what I have observed in
children, this alone would be decisive in doing away with such