The corporal punishment of children is certainly harmful. (_a_) Corporal punishment is injurious to the child’s health. In former times this objection had perhaps less weight, for the child’s constitution, and especially the child’s nervous system, were then less sensitive than they are to-day. (_b_) Corporal punishment gradually makes the child quite indifferent to the handling and making-use of its body. In many instances, either in the chastiser or in the chastised, or in both, it gives rise to sexual excitement. It is especially dangerous for girls, whom it is apt to prepare for a life of prostitution. (_c_) Corporal punishment has a coarsening and hardening influence both on teacher and on child. The teacher tends ever more and more to give way to his impulses, and thereby becomes a disastrous example for the child. (_d_) Corporal punishment breaks the child’s will, and induces a sense of degradation which is greater in proportion to the intensity of the child’s own self-respect. (_e_) Corporal punishment makes a child hypocritical and deceitful, and gives it a hint to be wilier the next time. For ultimately the idea is formed in the child’s mind that it has been punished, not for committing a fault, but because it has been found out. Punishment should always be of such a nature as to strengthen as much as possible those inner forces and impulses through whose weakness the liability to the punishment has been incurred. On no account whatever should the punishment be such as will encourage in the child’s mind the belief that the act for which it is punished was, after all, one it had a right to do. If, for example, a child has injured a servant, it should be punished by making it relieve the servant of some portion of the latter’s work. If the child has injured any one, it is not a suitable punishment for the teacher to inflict direct injury on the child, for this would merely encourage the latter to believe that the strong are justified in inflicting injury on the weak.