to teach
others. The Sense of Shame and Honour is enough to keep the World itself
in Order without Corporal Punishment, much more to train the Minds of
uncorrupted and innocent Children. It happens, I doubt not, more than
once in a Year, that a Lad is chastised for a Blockhead, when it is good
Apprehension that makes him incapable of knowing what his Teacher means:
A brisk Imagination very often may suggest an Error, which a Lad could
not have fallen into, if he had been as heavy in conjecturing as his
Master in explaining: But there is no Mercy even towards a wrong
Interpretation of his Meaning, the Sufferings of the Scholar's Body are
to rectify the Mistakes of his Mind.

I am confident that no Boy who will not be allured to Letters without
Blows, will ever be brought to any thing with them. A great or good Mind
must necessarily be the worse for such Indignities; and it is a sad
Change to lose of its Virtue for the Improvement of its Knowledge. No
one who has gone through what they call a great School, but must
remember to have seen Children of excellent and ingenuous Natures, (as
has afterwards appeared in their Manhood) I say no Man has passed
through this way of Education, but must have seen an ingenuous Creature
expiring with Shame, with pale Looks, beseeching Sorrow, and silent
Tears, throw up its honest Eyes, and kneel on its tender Knees to an
inexorable Blockhead, to be forgiven the false Quantity of a Word in
making a Latin Verse; The Child is punished, and the next Day he commits
a like Crime, and so a third with the same Consequence. I would fain ask
any reasonable Man whether this Lad, in the Simplicity of his native
Innocence, full of Shame, and capable of any Impression from that Grace
of Soul, was not fitter for any Purpose in this Life, than after that
Spark of Virtue is extinguished in him, tho' he is able to write twenty
Verses in an Evening?

Seneca says, after his exalted way of Talking, _As the immortal Gods
never learnt any Virtue, tho they are endowed with all that is good; so
there are some Men who have so natural a Propensity to what they should
follow, that they learn it almost as soon as they hear it._ [1] Plants
and Vegetables are cultivated into the Production of finer Fruit than
they would yield without that Care; and yet we cannot entertain Hopes of
producing a tender conscious Spirit into Acts of Virtue, without the
same Methods as is used to cut Timber, or give new Shape to a Piece o