Methods of education are essentially two in number, severity and indulgence. Which is better? It is impossible to give a categorical answer, for we are not concerned with the education of a brain or a man in general, but of the brain and man of a special case. Some say that until the child has become a rational being it must be considered and treated as a little animal, because it has no sense of shame, nor of the rights of property, nor of social duty; that the didactic methods which it most fears must be adopted, that is to say, those only which serve to tame and domesticate animals--punishments, the whip, blows. Happily, in the midst of the animal instincts a light is soon diffused in the child’s brain which will place him above all the animals of the earth, and none can say with certainty when these first flashes of reason appear. The pain of a blow must always appear to him so out of proportion to all his instinctive, involuntary movements, that instead of softening him it will rouse profound resentment in him, and impress him with the distressing idea of permanently threatening dangers and of the strangeness of his surroundings, in which, without any plausible reason, caresses alternate with blows. The same methods should be followed in education as in the teaching of science, which are those giving to man the firmest and most lasting convictions. Whatever may be the force of authority, it can never be compared in efficacy to that of conviction; we should never issue any command without showing the reasons why it should be done in this way rather than in another. Children should be brought up as though they were rational, because the animal in them disappears, the man remains. Recourse should be had to the most intelligible and convincing means; if it is seen that they have acquired bad habits, the opportunities for ill-doing should be removed and the effort made, by offering them other attractions, to preserve them from the temptation of those acts or those things which they are to avoid. One may be more indulgent with good, docile children. Those who cry easily, who blush and scream, give less trouble than those who grow pale and tremble, who do not manifest their resentment by an immediate outburst, as though they were brooding hatred in a corner of their hearts. A peasant-woman, in speaking of someone, once said to me: 'I have seen him gnash his teeth when a boy for a mere nothing, and so I would not marry him, and I was quite right.’ In mental sufferings, when the tension of the nervous system cannot find a vent in immediate emotion, it accumulates and becomes more incontrollable in long-suppressed outbursts; the rage which we thought subdued continues to torture us and gnaw our vitals.