Observations upon Liberal Education. George Turnbull
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to it by blows, threats, or abusive language, when he had no mind; or be for ever so used, for some circumstances in his application to it? If we consider the power of habit in any one instance, we will not wonder, if aversions so formed, are never, or at least not easily overcome. The very sight of a cup out of which one has often taken a nauseous potion, turns his stomach: let it be ever so clean, or made of the richest materials, and garnished with the most precious jewels, yet every thing offered in it will nauseate him. Again, such a sort of slavish discipline creates a servile temper, a soil in which no virtue can grow up to maturity; a soil, on the contrary, in which envy, revenge, and many other abominable vices naturally sprout up and pullulate. The child may submit, and dissemble obedience whilst the rod hangs over him; but when, that being removed, he can promise himself impunity, he will give, with double gust of pleasure, full swing to his disguised inclination. Generally speaking, no passion can be altered by this method, but is rather increased and corroborated. And hence it is, that after such restraint it usually breaks out with greater violence. But if any disease is thus cured, how is it, but by bringing in a much worse one in its room, which is either, low spiritedness and inactivity for want of conscious capacity, which is ever active, or a secret burning to get loose, in order to give full indulgence to appetite, and make large amends to himself for all his suffering in this rigid way, by equal austerity, or rather cruelty to others, as far as his power can reach. Thus did the famous Lockias reason, who had so accurately studied human nature, that he is said to have had a glass by which he could spy into the inmost recesses and windings of the human heart.
And Socrates is said to have had this conversation with a father who had been just whipping his son.
SOC. You love hunting, Ctesicles, I know, and your dogs are famous. You must certainly have some particular secret for breeding them.
CT. They are indeed the best I know. I could tell you many surprizing things of them.
SOC. Another time I shall be glad to hear them; for I do not think the instincts, the sagacity and docility of brutes unworthy the notice of a philosopher. One thing only at present I would gladly learn from you. Does it cost much whipping to give them a good nose, or much travel. For if it does, I am afraid I should never succeed in their education. So effeminate am I, that I cannot bear the cries even of an animal.
CT. It is good for you then, Socrates, you did not come here two minutes sooner.
SOC. You was giving some instructions with your rod to some of your dogs, I suppose.
CT. Ay, to a whelp worse to breed than any one of the race that is properly so called.
SOC. You don’t mean one of your children surely.
CT. They, you think, want no correction; or correction, you perhaps imagine, is proper discipline for brutes only. But let me tell you, that if you think so, you must be a novice indeed, as wise as you are said to be.
SOC. The oracle called me so, but why I have not yet found out—,15 unless it be for my sincere disposition to learn wisdom from every one who can teach me.—And as you have now exceedingly raised my curiosity, so I hope you will satisfy it.
CT. What would you know from me?
SOC. Only why you whipp’d your boy? whether it was to whip him into the love of knowledge, or the love of virtue? For I think these two are called the goals at which education aims.
CT. I am no stranger, Socrates, to your odd way of perplexing and confounding our celebrated pretenders to science and rhetorick, but you must not 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