§ 39. Punishment as an educational means is nevertheless essentially corrective, since, by leading the youth to a proper estimation of his fault and a positive change in his behavior, it seeks to improve him. At the same time it stands as a sad indication of the insufficiency of the means previously used. On no account should the youth be frightened from the commission of a misdemeanor, or from the repetition of his negative deed through fear of punishment——a system which leads always to terrorism: but, although it may have this effect, it should, before all things, impress upon him the recognition of the fact that the negative is not allowed to act as it will without limitation, but rather that the Good and the True have the absolute power in the world, and that they are never without the means of overcoming anything that contradicts them. ——In the statute-laws, punishment has the opposite office. It must first of all satisfy justice, and only after this is done can it attempt to improve the guilty. If a government should proceed on the same basis as the educator it would mistake its task, because it has to deal with adults, whom it elevates to the honorable position of responsibility for their own acts. The state must not go back to the psychological ethical genesis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank of importance the biographical moment which contains the deed in process and the circumstances of a mitigating character, and it must consider first of all the deed in itself. It is quite otherwise with the educator; for he deals with human beings who are relatively undeveloped, and who are only growing toward responsibility. So long as they are still under the care of a teacher, the responsibility of their deed belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in which punishment is administered in the state with that in education, we work much evil.—— § 40. Punishment as a negation of a negation, considered as an educational means, cannot be determined _à priori_, but must always be modified by the peculiarities of the individual offender and by the peculiar circumstances. Its administration calls for the exercise of the ingenuity and tact of the educator. [Sidenote: _Three Kinds of Punishment._] § 41. Generally speaking, we must make a distinction between the sexes, as well as between the different periods of youth; (1) some kind of corporal punishment is most suitable for children, (2) isolation for older boys and girls, and (3) punishment based on the sense of honor for young men and women.