ildhood; he withdraws himself
secretly from this abuse of power, provided strict treatment does
not succeed in totally depressing the level of the child's will and
obstructing his energies.

This is certainly a danger, but the most serious effect of corporal
punishment is that it has established an unethical morality as its
result. Until the human being has learnt to see that effort, striving,
development of power, are their own reward, life remains an unbeautiful
affair. The debasing effects of vanity and ambition, the small and great
cruelties produced by injustice, are all due to the idea that failure or
success sets the value to deeds and actions.

A complete revolution in this crude theory of value must come about
before the earth can become the scene of a happy but considerate
development of power on the part of free and fine human beings. Every
contest decided by examinations and prizes is ultimately an immoral
method of training. It awakens only evil passions, envy and the
impression of injustice on the one side, arrogance on the other. After I
had during the course of twenty years fought these school examinations,
I read with thorough agreement a short time ago, Ruskin's views on the
subject. He believed that all competition was a false basis of stimulus,
and every distribution of prizes a false means. He thought that the
real sign of talent in a boy, auspicious for his future career, was
his desire to work for work's sake. He declared that the real aim of
instruction should be to show him his own proper and special gifts, to
strengthen them in him, not to spur him on to an empty competition with
those who were plainly his superiors in capacity.

Moreover it ought not to be forgotten that success and failure involve
of themselves their own punishment and their own reward, the one bitter,
the other sweet enough to secure in a natural way increased strength,
care, prudence, and endurance. It is completely unnecessary for the
educator to use, besides these, some special punishments or special
rewards, and so pervert the conceptions of the child that failure seems
to him to be a wrong, success on the other hand as the right.

No matter where one turns one's gaze, it is notorious that the
externally encouraging or awe-inspiring means of education, are an
obstacle to what are the chief human characteristics, courage in oneself
and goodness to others.

A people whose education is carried on by gentle means only (