advice was
useless, and that nothing but "bitter experience" would produce any
effect: nothing, that is, but suffering the unavoidable consequences.
And if further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the
most efficient penalty, but that no humanly-devised penalty can replace
it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our
various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal discipline
that have been proposed and legally enforced, none have answered the
expectations of their advocates. Artificial punishments have failed to
produce reformation; and have in many cases increased the criminality.
The only successful reformatories are those privately-established ones
which approximate their regime to the method of Nature--which do little
more than administer the natural consequences of criminal conduct:
diminishing the criminal's liberty of action as much as is needful for
the safety of society, and requiring him to maintain himself while
living under this restraint. Thus we see, both that the discipline by
which the young child is taught to regulate its movements is the
discipline by which the great mass of adults are kept in order, and more
or less improved; and that the discipline humanly-devised for the worst
adults, fails when it diverges from this divinely-ordained discipline,
and begins to succeed on approximating to it.

* * * * *

Have we not here, then, the guiding principle of moral education? Must
we not infer that the system so beneficent in its effects during infancy
and maturity, will be equally beneficent throughout youth? Can any one
believe that the method which answers so well in the first and the last
divisions of life, will not answer in the intermediate division? Is it
not manifest that as "ministers and interpreters of Nature" it is the
function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the
true consequences of their conduct--the natural reactions: neither
warding them off, nor intensifying them, nor putting artificial
consequences in place of them? No unprejudiced reader will hesitate in
his assent.

Probably, however, not a few will contend that already most parents do
this--that the punishments they inflict are, in the majority of cases,
the true consequences of ill-conduct--that parental anger, venting
itself in harsh words and deeds, is the result of a child's
transgression--and that, in the suffering, ph