Education : intellectual, moral, and physical / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Herbert Spencer
Date:
[1861?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Education : intellectual, moral, and physical / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    130/230 page 116
    often made apropos of such cases— The burnt child dreads the fire —we see not only that the analogy between this social discipline and Nature's early discipline of infants is universally recognized; but we also see an implied conviction that this discipline is of the most efficient kind. Nay indeed, this conviction is more than implied; it is distinctly stated. Every one has heard others confess that only by dearly bought experience had they been induced to give up some bad or foolish course of conduct formerly pursued. Every one has heard, in the criticisms passed on the doings of this spendthrift or the other schemer, the remark that advice was useless, and that nothing but bitter experience would produce any effect: nothing, that is, but suffering the un- avoidable consequences. And if further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly-devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal disci- pline that have been proposed and legally enforced, none have answered the expectations of their advocates. Artificial pun- ishments have failed to produce reformation; and have in many cases increased the criminality. The only successful reforma- tories are those privately-established ones which approximate their regime to the method of Nature—which do little more than administer the natural consequences of criminal conduct: diminishing the criminal's liberty of action asmuchasis needful for the safety of society, and requiring him to maintain himself while living under this restraint. Thus we see, both that the discipline by which the young child is taught to regulate its movements is the discipline by which the great mass of adults are kept in order, and more or less improved; and that the discipline humanly-devised for the worst adults, fails when it diverges from this divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed on approximating to it. Have we not here, then, the guiding principle of moral
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