I have thus far endeavored to combat the notion that physical pleasure should be offered as a reward for virtue, and physical pain inflicted as a punishment for moral faults. Now we are in a position to apply this conclusion to some special questions which it is proposed to take up for consideration. The first of these relates to corporal punishment. 1. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT It was in that period of history which is so justly called the Dark Ages that the lurid doctrine of hell as a place for the eternal bodily torture of the wicked haunted men's minds, and the same mediaeval period witnessed the most horrible examples of corporal punishment in the schools and in the homes. This was no mere coincidence. As the manners of the people are so will their religion be. Savage parents who treat their children in a cruel, passionate way naturally entertain the idea of a god who treats his human children in the same way. If we wish to purify the religious beliefs of men, we must first ameliorate their daily life. There was once a schoolmaster who boasted that during his long and interesting career he had inflicted corporal punishment more than a million times. In modern days the tide of public opinion has set strongly against corporal punishment. It is being abolished in many of our public institutions, and the majority of cultivated parents have a decided feeling against availing themselves of this method of discipline. But the mere sentiment against it is not sufficient. Is the opposition to it the result possibly of that increased sensitiveness to pain which we observe in the modern man, of the indisposition to inflict or to witness suffering? Then some stern teacher might tell us that to inflict suffering is sometimes necessary, that it is a sign of weakness to shrink from it, that as the surgeon must sometimes apply the knife in order to effect a radical cure, so the conscientious parent should sometimes inflict physical pain in order to eradicate grievous faults. The stern teacher might warn us against "sparing the rod and spoiling the child." We must not, therefore, base our opposition to corporal punishment merely on sentimental grounds. And there is no need for doing so, for there are sound principles on which the argument may be made to rest. Corporal punishment does not merely conflict with our tenderer sympathies, it thwarts and defeats the purpose of moral reformation. In the first place it brutalizes the child; secondly, in many cases it breaks the child's spirit, making it a moral coward; and, thirdly, it tends to weaken the sense of shame, on which the hope of moral improvement depends.