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.
_Corporal punishment brutalizes the child._ We may be justified in beating a brute, though, of course, never in a cruel, merciless way. A lazy beast of burden may be stirred up to work; an obstinate mule must feel the touch of the whip. Corporal punishment implies that a rational human being is on the level of an animal.[1] Its underlying thought is: you can be controlled only through your animal instincts; you can be moved only by an appeal to your bodily feelings. It is a practical denial of that higher nature which exists in every human being, and this is a degrading view of human character. A child which is accustomed to be treated like an animal is apt to behave like an animal. Thus corporal punishment instead of moralizing serves to demoralize the character.