158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Discipline of Consequences. — The idea of Rousseau that 

 children, instead of being punished, should be left to the natural con- 

 sequences of their disobedience, has much plausibility, and is taken 

 up at the present day by educationists. Mr. Spencer has dwelt upon it 

 with great emphasis. 



One obvious limitation to the principle is, that the results may be 

 too serious to be used for discipUne : children have to be protected 

 from the consequences of many of their acts. 



What is intended is, to free parents and others from the odium of 

 being the authors of pain, and to throw this upon impersonal agencies, 

 toward whom the child can entertain no resentment. But, before count- 

 ing on that result, two things are to be weighed. For one, the child 

 may soon be able to see through the device, and to be aware that after 

 all the pain is brought about by virtue of a well-laid scheme for the 

 purpose : as when the unpunctual child is left behind. The other re- 

 mark is that, the personifying or anthropomorphic tendency being at its 

 greatest in early years, every natural evil is laid to the door of a person 

 known or unknown. The habit of looking at the laws of Nature, in 

 their crushing application, as cold, passionless, purposeless, is a very 

 late and difficult acquirement, one of the triumphs of science or philos- 

 ophy : we begin by resenting everything that does us harm, and are 

 but too ready to look round for an actual person to bear the brunt of 

 our wrath. 



A further difficulty is the want of foresight and foreknowledge in 

 children : they are unable to realize consequences when the evil impulse 

 is upon them. This, of course, decreases by time ; and, according as 

 the sense of consequences is strengthened, these become more adequate 

 as a check to misconduct. It is then indifferent whether they are nat- 

 ural or ordained. .• e 

 Among the natural consequences that are relied on as correctives ot 



misbehavior in the family are such as these : going with shabby clothes, 

 from having spoiled a new suit; getting no new toys to replace those 

 that are destroyed. The case of one child having to make reparation 

 to another for things destroyed is more an example of Bentham's " char- 

 acteristical " punishment. 



In school, the discipline of consequences comes in under the ar- 

 rangements of the school for assigning each one's merit on an imper- 

 sonal plan, the temper or disposition of the master being nowhere ap- 

 parent. The regulations being fixed and understood, non-compliance 

 punishes itself. — Author's advance-sheets. 



What is maintained is that these other punishments are not so liable to abuse, nor so 

 brutalizing to all concerned, as bodily inflictions. 



