tent blunders in human life is to believe that a certain penalty is
divinely appointed for a certain offence. Our theory of punishment is all
wrong; we inflict punishment, as a rule, not to improve an offender, but
out of revenge, or because it gives us a comfortable sense of our own
justice. And the whole difficulty of discipline is that it is apt to be
applied in lumps, and distributed wholesale to people who don't all want
the same amount. We haven't really got very far away from the Squeers
theory of giving all the boys brimstone and treacle alike."

"Yes, but in a school," said Vincent, "would not the boys themselves resent
it, if they were punished differently for the same offence?"

"That is to say," said Father Payne, "that you are to treat boys, whom you
are supposed to be training, in accordance with their ideas of justice, and
not in accordance with yours! Why should you confirm them in a wholly
erroneous view of justice? Justice isn't a mathematical thing--or rather,
it ought to be a mathematical thing, because you ought to take into account
a lot of factors, which you simply omit from your calculation. I believe
very little in punishment, to tell you the truth; it ought only to be
inflicted after many warnings, when the offence is deliberately repeated. I
don't believe that the sane and normal person is a habitual and deliberate
offender. The kind of absence of self-restraint which makes people unable
to resist temptation, in any form, is a disease, and ought to be
segregated. I haven't the slightest doubt that we shall end by segregating
or sterilising the person of criminal tendencies, which only means a total
inability, in the presence of a temptation, to foresee consequences, and
which gratifies a momentary desire."

"But apart from definite moral disease," said Vincent, "isn't it a good
thing to compel people, if possible, into a certain sort of habit? I am
speaking of faults which are not criminal--things like unpunctuality,
laziness, small excesses, mild untrustworthiness, and so forth."

"Well, I don't personally believe in coercive discipline at all," said
Father Payne. "I think it simply gets people out of shape. I believe in
trying to give people a real motive for self-discipline: take
unpunctuality, for instance. The only way to make an unpunctual person
punctual is to convince him that it is rude and unjust to keep other people
waiting. There is nothing sacred about punctuality in itself, unle