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Education 1 59
learning to destroy it, real education in hu-
manity will begin.
For the benefit of those who are not con-
vinced that corporal punishment can be dis-
pensed with in a manly education, by so remote
and so distant an example as Japan, I should
like to mention a fact closer to us. Our Ger-
manic forefathers did not have this method of
education. It was introduced with Christianity.
Corporal discipline was turned into a religious
duty, and as late as the seventeenth century
there were intelligent men who flogged their
children once a week as a part of spiritual
guardianship. I once asked our great poet,
Victor Rydberg, and he said that he had found
no proof that corporal punishment was usual
among the Germans in heathen times. I
asked him whether he did not believe that the
fact of its absence had encouraged the ener-
getic individualism and manliness in the North-
ern peoples. He thought so, and agreed with
me. Finally, I might note from our own
time, that there are many families and schools,
our girls’ schools for example, and also boys’
schools in some countries, where corporal pun-
ishment is never used. I know a family with
twelve children whose activity and capacity
are not damaged by bringing them under the
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