This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1844. Excerpt: ... is perfect love, every known law will be fulfilled. Parents and teachers often create that disgust at study, and that incorrigibleness and obstinacy of disposition, which they deplore. It is a sad exchange, if the very blows, which beat arithmetic and grammar into a boy, should beat confidence and manliness out. So it is quite as important to consider what feelings are excited in the mind, as what are subdued, by the punishment. Which side gains, though the evil spirit of roguery or wantonness be driven out, if seven other evil spirits, worse than the first, --sullenness, irreverence, fraud, lying, liatred, malice, revenge, --are allowed to come in? The motive from which the offence emanated, and the motives with which the culprit leaves the bar of his judge and executioner, are every thing. If these are not regarded, the offender may go away worse than he came, in addition to a gratuitous flagellation. To say a child knows better, is nothing; if he knows better, why does he not do better? The answer to this question reveals the difficulty; and whoever has not patience and sagacity to solve that inquiry, is as unworthy of the parental trust, as is the physician of administering to the sick, who prescribes a fatal nostrum, and says, in justification, that he knew nothing of the disease. In fine, if any thing in the wide range of education, demands patience, forethought, judgment, and the all-subduing spirit of love, it is this; and though it may be too much to say, that corporal punishment can be disused by all teachers, with regard to all scholars, in all schools, yet it may be averred without exception, that it is never inflicted with the right spirit, nor in the right measure, when it is not more painful to him who imposes, than to bim who receives it."--...