ten another; on the other hand, it is a natural and everyday
occurrence for him to get blows or give them. It is intelligible
enough that, as we become educated, we are glad to dispense with blows
by a system of mutual restraint. But it is a cruel thing to compel a
nation or a single class to regard a blow as an awful misfortune which
must have death and murder for its consequences. There are too
many genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by
imaginary misfortunes, which brings real ones in their train: and yet
this is the precise effect of the superstition, which thus proves
itself at once stupid and malign.

It does not seem to me wise of governments and legislative bodies to
promote any such folly by attempting to do away with flogging as a
punishment in civil or military life. Their idea is that they are
acting in the interests of humanity; but, in point of fact, they are
doing just the opposite; for the abolition of flogging will serve only
to strengthen this inhuman and abominable superstition, to which so
many sacrifices have already been made. For all offences, except the
worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the natural penalty;
and a man who will not listen to reason will yield to blows. It seems
to me right and proper to administer corporal punishment to the man
who possesses nothing and therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put
in prison because his master's interests would suffer by the loss of
his service. There are really no arguments against it: only mere talk
about _the dignity of man_--talk which proceeds, not from any clear
notions on the subject, but from the pernicious superstition I have
been describing. That it is a superstition which lies at the bottom of
the whole business is proved by an almost laughable example. Not
long ago, in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was
replaced by the stick. In either case the object was to produce
physical pain; but the latter method involved no disgrace, and was not
derogatory to honor.

By promoting this superstition, the State is playing into the hands of
the principle of knightly honor, and therefore of the duel; while at
the same time it is trying, or at any rate it pretends it is trying,
to abolish the duel by legislative enactment. As a natural consequence
we find that this fragment of the theory that _might is right_, which
has come down to us from the most savage days of the Middle Age, has
still in this