Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/230

216 of money, before they decide to allow Socialism to follow its own course.

II

We must now carry our investigations farther, and enquire what are the motives behind the great aversion felt by moralists for acts of violence; a very brief summary of a few very curious changes which have taken place in the manners of the working classes is first of all indispensable.

A. I observe, in the first place, that nothing is more remarkable than the change which has taken place in the methods of bringing up children; formerly it was believed that the rod was the most necessary instrument of the schoolmaster; nowadays corporal punishments have disappeared from our public elementary schools. I believe that the competition which the latter had to maintain against the Church schools played a very great part in this progress; the Brothers applied the old principles of clerical pedagogy with extreme severity; and these, as is well known, involve an excessive amount of corporal punishment inflicted for the purpose of taming the demon who prompted so many of the child's bad habits. The Government was intelligent enough to set up in opposition to this barbarous system a milder form of education which brought it a great deal of sympathy; it is not at all improbable that the severity of clerical punishments is largely responsible for the present tumult of hatred against which the Church is struggling with such difficulty. In 1901 I wrote: "If (the Church) were well advised, it would suppress entirely that part of its activities which is devoted to children; it would do away