That same officer, if the men were unsteady on parade, would stand quite still and _look_ at them. He had clear blue eyes, and his look was not stern, it was calm and confident. It brought the whole company to attention without a word. The officer was a _man_, and the men knew it, and they knew it because _he_ knew it The boss who begins to bully is not sure of himself. Children, soldiers, workers, and animals know by instinct when the boss is not sure of himself. Those who put so much trust in blame and punishment do not understand human nature. I said in a previous chapter that a man could not believe a thing unless his reason told him that it was true. I now say that a man cannot help believing a thing when his reason tells him it is true. The secret of reform is to make men understand. The terrors of capital punishment, the terrors of the "cat," even the terrors of hell-fire fail to awe the criminal. That is because the criminal is stupid or ignorant, and lacks imagination. He hears of hell, and of death. But he cannot imagine either. He seldom thinks. He seldom looks beyond the end of his nose. Discipline is not preserved in the army by the dread of the "cat," nor of the cells. It is kept by the fact that the wildest and most reckless man knows that he _must_ obey, that the whole physical and moral force of the army is united to insist upon obedience. If he disobey an order he will be punished. He does not care a snap of his fingers for the punishment. But he knows that after he has done his punishment drill the order will be repeated, and that he will be obliged to obey. He knows that the sentiment of the army is against him until he does obey. I have seen an officer get a battalion into a mess on parade, and then lose his temper and bully the men.. And I have seen another officer on the same day drill the men and get them to work like a machine. The first officer did not know how to give the orders. The second knew his business, was sure that he did know it, and so let the men feel that he knew it. It is with parents as with those two officers. The one who knows his duty, and does it properly, never has any occasion to lose his temper. It is time Solomon's rod followed the witches' broom. It is time the "cat," and the chain, and the cell, and the convict's dress, and the oakum and the skilly, and the gallows followed the rack and the thumbscrew and the faggot and the wheel. It is time the leaders of the people were taught to lead. It is time the educated and the uneducated were given some real education. It is time that tyranny, cruelty, self-righteousness, superstition, and the bad old conventions of an ignorant past, gave place to reason, to science, to manhood. "But," the penal moralist will demand, "if you propose to abolish blame and punishment, what do you propose to put in their place?" And I answer, "Justice, knowledge, and reason--in fact, an improved environment."