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en fo much of carrying a ftrict hand over children, that perhaps I fhall be fufpected of not confidering enough what is due to their tender age and conftitutions. But that opinion will vanish, when you have heard me a little further: for I am very apt to think, that great feverity of punishment does but very little good, nay great harm, in education; and I believe it will be found that, cateris paibus thofe children, who have been moft chaftifed, feldom make the best men. All that I have hitherto contended for is, that whatsoever rigour is neceffary, it is more to be used, the younger children are; and, having by a que application wrought its effects, it is to be relaxed, and changed into a milder fort of government.

$ 44. A compliance and fuppleness Are. of their wills being by a fteady hand introduced by parents, before children have memories to retain the beginning of it, will feem natural to them, and work afterwards in them, as if it were fo, preventing all occafions of fruggling or repining. The only care is, that it be begun early, and inflexibly kept to, till awe and refpect be grown familiar, and their appears not the leaft reluctancy in the fubmiffion and ready obedience of their minds. When this reverence is once thus eftablished (which it must be early,) or clfe it will coft pains and blows to recover it,

and

and the more the longer it is deferred) 'tis by it, ftill, mixed with as much indulgence as they make not an ill ufe of, and not by beating, chiding, or other fervile punishments, they are for the future to be governed, as they grow up to nore understanding.

45. That this is fo, will be eafily Self-deallowed, when it is to be confidered, nial. what is to be aimed at in an ingenious education, and upon what it turns.

1. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations, he that knows not how to refit the importunity of prefent pleasure or pain, for the fake of what reafon tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and induftry, and is in danger never to be good for any thing. This temper therfore, fo contrary to unguided nature, is to be got betimes; and this habit, as the true foundation of future ability and happiness is to be wrought into the mind as early as may be, even from the first dawnings of knowledge or apprehenfion in children, and fo to be confirmed in them, by all the care and ways imaginable, by those who have the oversight of their education.

§ 46. 2. On the other fide, if the

mind be curbed, and humbled too Dejected. much in children; if their spirits

be abased and broken much by too ftrict an hand over them, they lofe all their vigour and

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induftry, and are in a worfe flate than the former. For extravagant young fellows, that have liveliness and fpirit, come fometimes. to be fet right, and fo make able and great men; but dejected minds timorous and tame, and low fpirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very feldom attain to any thing. To a void the danger that is on either hand, is the great art and he that has found a way how to keep up a child's fpirits easy, active, and free, and yet at the fame time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneafy to him;: he, I fay, that knows how to reconcile these feening contradictions, has, in my opinion, got the true fecret of education,

§ 47. The ufual, lazy, and fhort way by chaftifement, and the rod, which Beating. is the only inftrument of govern. ment that tutors generally know, or ever think of, is the most unfit of any to be ufed in education; because it tends to both thofe mifchiefs which, as we have fhewn, are the Scylla and Charybdis, which on the one hand or the other ruin all that mifcarry.

$48. 1. This kind of punishment contributes not at all to the maftery of our natural propenfity to indulge corporal and prefent pleafure, and to avoid pain at any rate; but rather encourages it, and thereby frengthens

that

that in us, which is the root from whence fpring all vicious actions, and the irregulari ties of life. For what other motive, but of fenfual pleasure and pain, does a child act by, who drudges at his book against his inclinations, or abstains from eating unwholfome fruit, that he takes pleasure in, only out of fear of whipping? He in this only prefers the greater corporal pleafure, or avoids the greater corporal pain. And what is it, to govern his actions, and direct his conducts by fuch motives as these? What is it, I fay, but to cherish that principle in him, which it is our bufinefs to root out and deftroy? And therefore I cannot think any correction ufeful to a child, where the shame of fuffering for having done amifs does not work more upon him than the pain.

49. 2. This fort of correction naturally breeds an averfion to that which 'tis the tutor's business to create a liking to. How ob vious is it to obferve that children come to hate things which were at firft acceptable to them, when they find themfelves whipped, and chid, and teafed about them? And it is not to be wondered at in them, when grown men would not be able to be reconciled to any thing by fuch ways. Who is there that would not be difgufted with any innocent recreation, in itself indifferent to him, if he fhould with blows or ill language be halled to it, C 6

when

when he had no mind? Or be conftantly fo treated, for fome circumstances in his application to it? This is natural to be fo. Offensive circumstances ordinarily infect innocent things, which they are joined with; and the very fight of a cup, wherein any one ufes to take naufeous phyfick, turns his ftomach, fo that nothing will relifh well out of it though the cup be never fo clean or wellfhaped, and of the richest materiais.

50. 3. Such a fort of flavish difcipline makes a flavish temper. The child submite, ånd diffembles obedience, whilft the fear of the rod hangs over him; but when that is removed, and by being out of fight, he can promife himself impunity, he gives the greater fcope to his natural inclination; which by this way is not at all altered, but, on the contrary heightened and increased in him; and after fuch restraints, breaks out usually with the more violence; or,

§ 51. 4. If feverity carried to the higheft pitch does prevail, and works a cure upon the prefent unruly diftemper, it is often by bringing in the room of it a worse and more dangerous disease, by breaking the mind; and then, in the place of a diforderly young fellow, you have a low fpirited moap'd creature who, however with his unnatural fobriety he may please filly people, who commend tame nactive children, becaufe they make no noife,

nor

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