embody the relationships
which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to
speak, the evidence as to whether his instruction is understood or
not. This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep his instruction
well ahead of its motor expression--thus leading the pupil to think
rather than to act without thinking--and at the same time to point out
the errors of performance which follow from haste in passing from
thought to action.

These indirect methods of reaching the impulsive pupil should never be
cast aside for the direct effort to "control" such a scholar. The very
worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him
or her to sit still or not to act; and a still worse thing--to make a
comparative again on the head of the superlative--is to affix to the
command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle
of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of
other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his attention
upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion
to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the
contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his
thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad
tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated
above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their
pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction
abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the
negative--that is, not to do a thing--has no negative force; but, on
the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger
suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing
which is forbidden. The "not" in a prohibition is no addition to the
pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact
that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended
to comes in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy
of all punishment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless the
penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act
punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual
and its nature diverting; never a threat which terminates there, nor a
penalty which fixes the thought of the offence more strongly in mind.
This is to say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement at this
period is best sec