Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/12

 *cacious with vicious and undisciplined children? Was there no risk of defeating one's own object—might not a slumbering vice be aroused in the attempt to train an ill-formed character?

This consideration had not escaped the wisdom of a theologian, who was also a medical man, Father Debreyne: 'Flagellation may have a result quite different from what one expected. It is therefore very important to abolish this form of punishment from our homes and schools as being indecent, disgraceful, and dangerous to morals.'

Should we have a more perverse imagination than our ancestors if we credited them with malign thoughts; or must we believe that a wind of sadism has blown over our poor humanity during long centuries? Assuredly, the intentions of most of them were pure, but how many black sheep there may have been in the flock!

In primitive times the whip was the attribute of brute force. The father, having complete authority over his child, delegates this authority to the teacher, who exercises it with more or less rigour according to his