On the contrary, an unprejudiced view of human nature shows that it is just as natural for a man to beat as it is for savage animals to bite and rend in pieces, or for horned beasts to butt or push.  Man may be said to be the animal that beats.  Hence it is revolting to our sense of the fitness of things to hear, as we sometimes do, that one man bitten another; on the other hand, it is a natural and everyday occurrence for him to get blows or give them.  It is intelligible enough that, as we become educated, we are glad to dispense with blows by a system of mutual restraint.  But it is a cruel thing to compel a nation or a single class to regard a blow as an awful misfortune which must have death and murder for its consequences.  There are too many genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by imaginary misfortunes, which brings real ones in their train:  and yet this is the precise effect of the superstition, which thus proves itself at once stupid and malign.

It does not seem to me wise of governments and legislative bodies to promote any such folly by attempting to do away with flogging as a punishment in civil or military life.  Their idea is that they are acting in the interests of humanity; but, in point of fact, they are doing just the opposite; for the abolition of flogging will serve only to strengthen this inhuman and abominable superstition, to which so many sacrifices have already been made.  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.  Now-a-days no one is allowed