For all offences, except the
worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the natural penalty;
and a man who will not listen to reason will yield to blows. It seems
to me right and proper to administer corporal punishment to the man
who possesses nothing and therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put
in prison because his master's interests would suffer by the loss of
his service. There are really no arguments against it: only mere talk
about _the dignity of man_--talk which proceeds, not from any clear
notions on the subject, but from the pernicious superstition I have
been describing. That it is a superstition which lies at the bottom of
the whole business is proved by an almost laughable example. Not
long ago, in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was
replaced by the stick. In either case the object was to produce
physical pain; but the latter method involved no disgrace, and was not
derogatory to honor.
By promoting this superstition, the State is playing into the hands of
the principle of knightly honor, and therefore of the duel; while at
the same time it is trying, or at any rate it pretends it is trying,
to abolish the duel by legislative enactment. As a natural consequence
we find that this fragment of the theory that _might is right_, which
has come down to us from the most savage days of the Middle Age, has
still in this nineteenth century a good deal of life left in it--more
shame to us! It is high time for the principle to be driven out bag
and baggage.
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