think to catch me in one of your subtle nets.—I never imagined one could be whipp’d into a liking for any thing, but I think one may be whipp’d out of a liking to a thing.
SOC. Ay, I am of your mind, out of a liking to learning, virtue, or any good thing, before the pleasure of it hath been much felt, or the excellence of it hath been fully perceived.—But sure it was not for any such end you were just now plying your rod so heartily. What then, pray, was your end, since you say one cannot be whipp’d into a liking to any thing.
CT. Strange that you will still endeavour to puzzle the matter. Did not I plainly tell you, that I know the whip can only beget disliking and not liking.
SOC. I wish you would be as plain as you pretend to be, for you really puzzle me.
CT. As how? Can’t you conceive how a sound beating may cure a liking and beget a dislike?
SOC. So dull am I, that tho’ I can easily understand how the whip may produce a dislike to any thing to which one is compelled by stripes, yet I cannot comprehend how one can be made to dislike without liking: dislike the rod, for example, or the hand that employs it (for hardly can one, however young, hate the rod itself) without liking to escape or elude it, or rather the hated hand that makes it so bitter.
CT. Why, this is the very thing I use it for.
SOC. You want therefore your child should make it his chief good to avoid the whip, or rather to get rid of the whip’s master. You do not aim at his hating lying, dissimulation, sauntering, or any other vice, but at his hating the whip.
CT. Indeed, Socrates, you are very dull, or would appear to be so. If he hates or fears the whip, will he not hate and fear the vices that expose him to the danger of it?
SOC. Tell me then, pray, Ctesicles, does one hate theft, who would steal with all his heart, if he thought he could escape hanging or scourging? Or is the boy in a fair way of learning, by the discipline of the rod, without any other instruction, to hate any vice for any other reason, but that it exposes to the risk of punishment?—But I suppose you had found all other methods fruitless, and it was stubbornness you corrected him for.
CT. Perhaps you would not approve of the method even in that case.
SOC. I shall not scruple to tell you my mind about the matter, if you will but satisfy me first as to this one thing; which is, whether you think any of the virtues, candour, temperance, or generosity, can be established in the mind by whipping?
CT. Did I not already tell you, that one cannot be whipped into liking, but only into disliking?
SOC. And can the vices be whipp’d out by the root, so as never to sprout again, unless the soil be sown with the virtues, and these grow up in their room? Can the field of the mind be quite bare and empty?
CT. There is no keeping you from your allegories.
SOC. Be not angry. I was just coming to your point. I was going to answer you in the words of a father, who is no less estimable for his own virtues, than for the many excellent citizens he has formed, by his proper care of his children. Four of them are now men able to serve the state in any capacity, whether in peace or war; and the other three have yet a more promising appearance than their brothers had at their age.
CT. Now you excite my attention. Pray tell me the story.
SOC. I shall not trouble you with the circumstances which gave rise to the discourse; for that might tire you. But his final observation was this: “That beating is found to do little good, where the pain of it is all the punishment that is feared or felt in it. For the influence of that quickly wears out with the memory of it.—But yet there is one fault, continued he, and but one, for which children should be beaten; and it is stubbornness or obstinacy. And in this too I would have it ordered so, if it can be, that the shame of the whipping, and not the pain, should be the greatest part of the punishment. Shame of doing amiss, and of deserving chastisement, is the only restraint belonging to virtue. All others may take place with the most vicious inclinations. If you would produce a truly ingenuous temper, it is shame for a fault, and the disgrace that attends it, rather than bodily suffering, children must stand in awe of. But stubbornness, and an obstinate disobedience, must be mastered by force. For this there is no other remedy. By this vice I mean, sturdy refusal to hear reason; for I suppose the parents or tutors never to command merely for the sake of commanding, but to deal rationally with their children or pupils, as they must do, if they would make them rational, i.e. virtuous and manly enough not to be over-ruled by arbitrary force or power, if they can shake off the chain.”
CT. Don’t you perceive, Socrates, how easily I might retort your own quibble upon you, and say, how can the whip produce a liking to reason?
SOC. I told you from the beginning the observation was not mine. But if you attend to it, you will see, by this very instance given, that it is no quibble. I said the whip did no good when it merely produced a dislike to it, and no liking to something contrary to the vice that deserved the whip. Now here in the case of stubbornness, and in that case only, the whip may banish stubbornness and produce pliableness; and all that reason wants is to have a fair hearing. So that the rod applied in the case of obstinacy may beget a disposition, a willingness to hear reason, rather than be whipt for not hearing it: and reason, when it can once gain attention, will soon give such pleasure, that listening to it will be liked more than the whip can be feared by any one used to it. For by use the whip soon loses all its terror. But reason, by practice, becomes daily more sweet and agreeable. Besides, in the case of stubbornness, or wilful headstrong refusal to hearken to reasonable conversation and instruction, there remains no other cure but the rod. Whereas, if docility be not wanting, there can never be occasion for any thing but information and reasoning, and the rewards of love and praise due to improving minds; the strongest relish of which will never diminish regard to virtue, or a sense of its intrinsic beauty, amiableness and excellence. If you once get into children love of credit, and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principle, which will constantly work and incline them to the right.
CT. Your notions are uncommon; the practice of the world, founded upon experience, the best guide, seems to be against them: yet they are very specious. I will think of them.
SOC. If experience be not on my side, I must be wrong. But I am sure, Ctesicles, whether you agree with what hath been said upon better authority than my own, or not, you will grant to him and me, that for all their innocent folly, playing and childishness, children are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained, as far as is consistent with respect to those who are present, and that even with the greatest allowance: and that if these faults of their age, rather than of the children, were left to time and good example to correct and cure, children would escape a great deal of useless, misapplied correction, which, surely, good parents or masters can’t have pleasure in.
CT. I never use the rod for any thing but vice.
SOC. Well, Ctesicles, so far you are right. But what do you think, is one virtuous, or so much as secure against vice, till he cordially loves virtue, and could not be whipt into any vicious compliance? Surely, you will not say he is. You feel a nobler and purer principle of honesty in your own heart. And therefore, if I should grant, you may scourge into the hatred of vice, yet I would willingly know what you do to beget the love of virtue? I know some reward virtue by sugar-plumbs; what is your way?
CT. Why, by giving them that or any thing they like.
SOC. Is it temperance, self-denial, or the power of abstaining from bodily gratifications, when duty commands, that you thus reward to strengthen it?
CT. I know not what to make of you. As it seems to me, you would neither have
