§ 1. This care too is not foreign to the state. Elsewhere I have taught that a soft and delicate education is the mother of insolence, the root of wickedness, and the nourishment of pride and irascibility. I now discuss whether all punishment ought to be confined to sharpness of words, sobriety of life, and labors suitable to youthful age, or whether the impulses of improvident minds should be restrained by fear of beatings and whips.
That age, which cannot yet be mistress of itself, has great patrons of bodily immunity: among the Greeks, Plutarch; among the Latins, Quintilian. Plutarch, a man of tested wisdom, has the greater authority; for the insolence and dissoluteness of Quintilian’s pupils refuted him, not without a mark of disgrace. Nevertheless, they are accustomed to advance arguments. First, they say, it is disgraceful for an adolescent to be beaten, because base dispositions and abandoned sloth are driven to duty by whips. A noble horse needs a bridle; the slowness of asses is urged into a run by neither spurs nor clubs. Blows applied to freeborn bodies are therefore insulting.
Let the eagerness of learners be nourished by kindness, praise, little gifts, honors, and the shadowy insignia of school magistracies. Let not solicitude and fear of a raging Orbilius oppress tender minds, lest they begin to hate the sciences before they can taste their sweetness. For since the roots of the arts are bitter and are seasoned with scarcely any pleasure, their sadness ought not to be increased by the austerity of a threatening countenance, a grim brow, and the bitterness of blows. It is better to restrain adolescents by shame and liberality than by fear.
Quintilian speaks beautifully: “I am not so unacquainted with the stages of life as to think that the tender must at once be pressed harshly and full exertion demanded from them. For this must especially be guarded against: that one who cannot yet love studies should hate them and, after once experiencing their bitterness, fear them even beyond his unformed years. Let this be play; let him be questioned and praised; sometimes let another be taught, though he himself is unwilling, so that he may envy him; let him compete from time to time and think himself victorious more often; let him be called forth by rewards which that age desires.
“I would also wish the verses set before him for imitation in writing to contain not idle sentiments, but something admonishing him of what is honorable. The memory of these things follows into old age, and what is impressed upon unformed minds will benefit their morals. It is also permissible for him to learn amid play the sayings of illustrious men and selected passages, chiefly from the poets, for acquaintance with them is more pleasing to the young.”
For if dispositions are upright, tractable, obedient, and fond of studies and labor, it is madness to harass them with blows; if they are depraved, stubborn, and idle, they cannot be amended even by blows. The case has been pleaded; it remains for us to cry out: O Porcian laws and Sempronian laws! I could be popular if I approved these arguments. The Porcian law removed rods from the bodies of all Roman citizens. The Porcian law wrested the liberty of citizens from the lictor. Cicero, in his speech For Rabirius, and Livy say: “The Porcian law was enacted for the backs of citizens, because it established a grave penalty if anyone had beaten or killed a Roman citizen. For the Valerian law had added nothing beyond declaring that it was wickedly done.” If those milder men introduce the Porcian law into the schools of the entire world, they will boast that they have brought in a new light of liberty and restored the freeborn to their former condition. But because it is of great importance to observe measure in this matter, since a master’s severity has ruined many and his leniency more, I shall explain the matter briefly.
§ 2. First I determine that in this case the Porcian law does not have the force of law, and that anyone will act rightly if he corrects the errors of adolescence with blows. For he will do this by divine authority: “He who loves his son frequently applies the whip to him, that he may rejoice at his latter end and not grope for the doors of his neighbors.” Ecclesiasticus 30:1. Indeed, those men bring it about by loving their sons that they hate them most ruinously through their love. “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him instructs him earnestly.” Proverbs 13:24. For that age is capable of instruction. “Have you sons? Instruct them, and bend them from their childhood.” Nor believe him so wise that he does not need that discipline. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of discipline will drive it away.” Proverbs 22:15. The Holy Spirit did not leave unspoken the fruit of so holy a severity: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; for if you strike him with a rod, he shall not die. You shall strike him with the rod and deliver his soul from hell.”
Ecclesiasticus, chapter 30, verse 8, gives the cause and necessity: “An untamed horse becomes stubborn, and an indulged son becomes headstrong. Fondle a son, and he will make you afraid; play with him, and he will grieve you. Do not laugh with him, lest you suffer sorrow and at the last your teeth be set on edge. Give him no power in his youth, and do not disregard his thoughts. Bend his neck in youth and beat his sides while he is a child, lest perhaps he become hardened and not believe you, and he become the sorrow of your soul.”
We would already have a fully pleaded case if the infinite truth of God, nowhere false and never deceiving, possessed as much weight with everyone as the moments of their private judgment. But because pseudo-politicians prefer the cleverness of their own reason to heavenly prudence, let us estimate the matter according to right reason.
§ 3. Since human desires and passions seethe most fiercely in adolescence, and since at that age there is less strength to endure and less prudence to avoid dangers, adolescents need the wisdom of another person as a stronger remedy. For adults, prisons, fetters, workhouses, evil lodgings, swords, cords of torture, crosses, and pyres are prepared, lest they dare to conceive and perpetrate crimes. A more tender age must also be restrained by its own terrors. Beginnings must be resisted; for a small error at the beginning grows beyond measure. Lines drawn from one center, almost parallel and separated by a scarcely perceptible distance, as they advance are separated from one another by an immense space.
The prince restrains drunkenness, thefts, murders, embezzlements, perjuries, and calumnies by the vigor of the laws. Far more necessary is it that their beginnings in children be restrained: sippings from cups, thefts of pens and little coins, fights and bites, plundering of gardens, little lies, and frauds. For through these lesser things they arrive at those greatest crimes.
§ 4. But let them learn to flee sins from love of virtue, not from fear of punishment. Indeed, let them love virtue and hate vices not only on account of their foulness, which they do not yet sufficiently recognize, but also on account of the company of punishments which renders the sweetness of vices bitter and horrible. Punishment causes them to interrupt their sins; interruption causes them at length to cease sinning; and cessation from sins is the beginning of virtue. That age is full of sins, as Augustine admonishes in Book 10 of The Literal Meaning of Genesis, chapter 12.
For we are not treating only of children somewhat advanced in years, to whom certain men are unwilling to attribute sin of their own until the juncture of their fourteenth year, when they begin to reach puberty. We would rightly believe this if there were no sins except those committed with the genital members. But who would dare affirm that thefts, lies, and perjuries are not sins, unless he wished to commit such things with impunity? Yet childhood is full of them, although they do not appear punishable in children in the same way as in older persons, because it is hoped that, as years are added and reason grows strong, they will be able to understand salutary precepts better and obey them more willingly. Nevertheless, if children commit these things with impunity, there is no hope that when older they will not dare what was permitted when they were small.
Certainly, who would deny that those sins must be punished except one who has endeavored to overthrow the whole state?
But blows, they say, are not fitting for great talents. Those talents, however, must be restrained especially and frequently, because they flee labor and pursue pleasant things rather than useful ones; they must be reproved even by fear and blows. I shall set down a passage of Augustine, than whom no one was greater in talent, who unfolds for us the history of his own time in Book 1 of the Confessions, chapters 9 and 10:
“O God, my God, what miseries and mockeries I experienced there, since as a boy this was set before me as the rule for living rightly: to obey those who admonished me, so that I might flourish in this world and excel in wordy arts which serve human honor and false riches. From there I was sent to school to learn letters, though, wretched as I was, I did not know what usefulness there was in them; and nevertheless, if I was slow in learning, I was beaten.
“For this was praised by our elders, and many who lived this life before us had built in advance the sorrowful roads through which we were compelled to pass, with toil and sorrow multiplied for the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we found men praying to you, and from them we learned, perceiving as best we could, that you were some great being who, even without appearing to our senses, could hear and assist us. For as a boy I began to pray to you, my aid and refuge, and in calling upon you I broke the knots of my tongue; and, though small, I prayed
to you with no small affection that I might not be beaten at school. And when you did not hear me—which was not to my folly—adult men laughed at us, even our parents, who wished no evil to befall me, although my blows were then a great and grievous evil to me.
“Is there anyone, Lord, so great in spirit and cleaving to you with immense affection—is there, I say, anyone (for a certain stupidity also produces this)—is there therefore anyone who, by piously cleaving to you, is so grandly disposed that he esteems racks, iron claws, and various tortures of this kind so lightly, though throughout all lands men supplicate you with great fear to escape them, that he laughs at those who fear them most bitterly, just as our parents laughed at the torments with which we boys were afflicted by our masters? For we neither feared those torments less nor prayed to you less to escape them; and yet we sinned by writing, reading, or thinking about letters less than was required of us.
“For, Lord, we did not lack memory or talent, which you willed us to possess sufficiently for that age, but we delighted in play, and punishment was exacted from us by those who certainly did the same things. But the trifles of adults are called business, while the like trifles of children are punished by adults; and no one pities either the children, or those adults, or both. Unless, indeed, any good judge of affairs approves my being beaten because, as a boy, I played ball and by that game was hindered from learning letters as quickly as I should—letters with which, as an adult, I would play more shamefully.
“For the very man by whom I was beaten did nothing different: if he was defeated by a fellow teacher in some petty question, he was tormented more by anger and envy than I was when overcome by a fellow player in a contest of ball. And nevertheless I sinned, Lord God, ordainer and creator of all natural things, but ordainer only—not creator—of sins. O Lord my God, I sinned by acting against the precepts of my parents and of those masters. For afterwards I could make good use of the letters which they wished me to learn, whatever their intention toward me. I was disobedient not because I chose better things, but from love of play, loving proud victories in contests and loving to have my ears scratched by false tales so that they might itch more ardently with that same curiosity, which sparkled more and more perilously through my eyes toward the spectacles and games of adults.
“Yet those who produce these spectacles excel with such dignity that almost all wish it for their little children; and nevertheless they willingly allow those children to be beaten if they are hindered by such spectacles from the study through which their parents desire them to arrive at producing those very spectacles. Look mercifully upon these things, Lord, and deliver us who now call upon you; deliver also those who do not yet call upon you, that they may call upon you and that you may deliver them.”
But what need is there of reasoning? For where can sins be unpunished without overflowing and growing beyond measure? It is the custom of all nations to instruct their sons by caresses and blows.
§ 5. But blows produce servile spirits. Rather, they produce amended spirits. Not only asses are driven by blows: the strength of horses is tamed for human uses by hard curb-bits and the rod, and whips teach the fiercest and most intelligent dogs. The son of Peleus himself, the bravest of the Danaans, was educated thus:
The son of Philyra perfected the boy Achilles with the lyre, And subdued his fierce spirit by the gentle art. He who so often terrified his allies and so often his enemies Is believed to have feared the aged old man. At his master’s demand, he offered to the blows The hands which Hector was destined to feel.
Nevertheless, a prudent master’s clemency will employ moderation, so that he neither grants license to sloth and vices nor, by cruelty, makes himself and the most beautiful studies objects of hatred. These very few laws will suffice.
First: let him never punish when angry. For he himself will easily exceed the measure, and the accused will think that he is being punished by the master’s anger, not by his own desert. For an angry man expends punishments for himself, not for the amendment of youth.
Second: let him be neither precipitate in punishing nor excessive in investigating. For he who punishes quickly is not far from punishing willingly.
Third: let him overlook whatever can be overlooked without public or private injury. For he punishes not because a sin has been committed, but lest sin be committed.
Fourth: let him abstain altogether from inflicting insult by word or deed. Let him employ only the reproof which a father also customarily uses.
Fifth: let him never call anyone by any name other than his own name or surname. For insulting nicknames offend grievously and produce hatred, not amendment. They cling even to adults.
Sixth: let punishment always remain within measure, and let chastisement at a tender age not be equal to the offense. For one who has deserved greater things, it is enough to beat him with a strap; for one who has deserved blows, it is often enough to have terrified him with threats.
Seventh: ordinarily let expulsion avenge graver offenses which demand punishments more atrocious than a father should inflict. For it does not befit a professor to rage, even against those who deserve it; an unaccustomed harshness of punishment brings infamy upon schools.
I am pleased to append here a judicial history, as Guevara, that most prudent counselor of kings, relates it in Book 2, chapter 37. Dicaearchus, the Greek historian, in his book of antiquities, and Sabellicus in his general history, say that a father came to Solon of Salamis to complain about his son, and the son about his father; and that the son, speaking first, instituted his accusation before the philosopher in this sense:
“I complain about my father because, although he is rich and I poor, although he is my father and I his only son, he has disowned me while living and made an adopted son his heir. My father neither ought nor was able to do this. For since I owe it to him that by nature I am so frail, it is equitable that he furnish me resources to sustain and support nature’s weakness.”
To this the father said: “I complain about my son because he has been to me not in the place of a son but of a mortal enemy. For in all matters, from his very cradle, he has always opposed me; and therefore I have disinherited him while living. Nothing would be more pleasant to me than if, just as I deprived him of an inheritance, so the gods deprived him of life. For the earth is most cruel which does not swallow alive an execrable son who has no reverence and obedience toward his father. As to his saying that I have adopted an entirely new son, I confess that this is true. But as to his saying that he has been deprived of an inheritance by me although begotten of my blood, I answer this: I am not disowning my son; I am disinheriting his luxury from the product of my labor. For nothing is more inequitable than that a flagitious adolescent son should be warmed and refreshed as though in baths by the sweat flowing drop by drop from the body of his aged father.”
The son responded thus to this speech of his father: “I do not deny that I have been troublesome to my father, and I confess that I have lived luxuriously and flagitiously. But if the truth must be spoken, the fact that I became luxurious and wicked was my father’s fault, because he did not form me while I was a boy; and if he disowns me for that reason, he inflicts the greatest injury upon me. For the father who does not educate and instruct his son well when young unjustly disowns him when old.”
The father, responding again, said: “It is true, son, that when you were very small you were treated by me with the greatest indulgence. But this too has not escaped you: when you were older, you were frequently both instructed
and chastised by me. The reason you were not imbued with teaching in infancy was that at that tender little age you were not capable of discipline. But when I educated you by both teaching and good discipline, there were present both a mind capable of precepts, an age suitable for acting, and powers firm enough for exercise. For upon one who lacks both aptitude and strength, the labor of teaching is expended in vain.”
Here the son spoke again: “Because you are old and I am young; because you are my father and I your son; because you are white in beard and head and I am beardless; because you have more experience, as one who has seen more, while I have experienced fewer things, as one who in age is still a youth [the end of the parenthetical phrase is indistinct in the print]—it appears most equitable that you should be believed and I condemned. For it often happens in the common course of life that he who has less authority therefore departs defeated from a most just case.
“I confess, my father, that when I was a boy you took care that I should be imbued with letters. But you will not deny that, if I had committed some fault, you did not permit me to be chastised and punished. From this it came about that, because you allowed me to do what pleased me while I was a boy, I became disobedient to you after I grew older. Therefore I rightly add this: if I am accused of offense and fault in this matter, you are certainly not altogether free of responsibility for my fault. For it is not the duty of parents to teach their sons in tender years to dispute about what the virtues are, but to accustom them to the pursuit of virtue and invite them by rewards. For it is an immense good if, as adolescents, we arrive at that advanced age at which we begin to recognize evil already accustomed and instructed to act well thereafter.”
After hearing and carefully weighing the reasons of both parties, Solon of Salamis said: “I deliver this judgment: that this adolescent’s father, because he did not chastise him even when he was a boy, shall lack burial after he has died; and I command that this father’s son, because he did not believe and obey his father while he was an adolescent, shall lack the inheritance while his father lives, on this condition: that after the father has died, his son shall enter upon his inheritance. For it would be most unjust that the son’s innocence should pay the penalties of the father’s wickedness.
“I likewise command that all these goods be deposited with a man of good faith, who shall from them give support to the father as long as he lives and make a tomb for the son after he has died. I have not without cause delivered this judgment, which embraces both life and death. For the gods do not will there to be a double punishment for one crime, but will some to be punished in life by the loss of honor or possessions, and others in death by the removal of memory and burial.”