Some Thoughts Concerning Education; By John Locke, Esq - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1779. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... industry, and are in a worse state than the for roer. For extravagant young fellows, that have liveliness and spirit, come sometimes to be set right, and so make able and great men; but dejected minds timorous and tame, and low spirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to any thing. To a void the danger that is on either hand, is the great art: and he that has found a way how to keep up a child's spirits easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming contradictions, has, in my opinion, got the true secret of education, § 47. The usual, lazy, and short way by chastisement, and the rod, which Beating, is the only instrument of govern. ment that tutors generally know, or ever think of, is the most unsit of any to be used in education; because it tends to both those mischiefs which, as we have shewn, are the Scylli and Charybdis, which on the one hand or the other ruin all that miscarry. § 48. i. This kind of punishment contributes not at all to the mastery of our natural propensity to indulge corporal and present pleasure, and.to avoid pain at any rate; but rather encourages it. and thereby strengthens that that in us, which is the root from whence spring all vicious actions, and the irregulars ties of life. For what other motive, but of sensual pleasure and pain, does a child act by, who drudges at his book against his inclinations, or abstains from eating unwholsome fruit, that he takes pleasure in, only out of fear of whipping? He in this only prefers the greater corporal pleasure, or avoids the greater corporal pain. And what is it, to govern his actions, and direct his conducts...