Note, in the second place, the character of the punishments by which these physical transgressions are prevented.  Punishments, we call them, in the absence of a better word; for they are not punishments in the literal sense.  They are not artificial and unnecessary inflictions of pain; but are simply the beneficent checks to actions that are essentially at variance with bodily welfare—­checks in the absence of which life would be quickly destroyed by bodily injuries.  It is the peculiarity of these penalties, if we must so call them, that they are simply the unavoidable consequences of the deeds which they follow:  they are nothing more than the inevitable reactions entailed by the child’s actions.

Let it be further borne in mind that these painful reactions are proportionate to the transgressions.  A slight accident brings a slight pain; a more serious one, a severer pain.  It is not ordained that an urchin who tumbles over the doorstep, shall suffer in excess of the amount necessary; with the view of making it still more cautious than the necessary suffering will make it.  But from its daily experience it is left to learn the greater or less penalties of greater or less errors; and to behave accordingly.

And then mark, lastly, that these natural reactions which follow the child’s wrong actions, are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be escaped.  No threats; but a silent, rigorous performance.  If a child runs a pin into its finger, pain follows.  If it does it again, there is again the same result:  and so on perpetually.  In all its dealing with inorganic Nature it finds this unswerving persistence, which listens to no excuse, and from which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising this stern though beneficent discipline, it becomes extremely careful not to transgress.

Still more significant will these general truths appear, when we remember that they hold throughout adult life as well as throughout infantine life.  It is by an experimentally-gained knowledge of the natural consequences, that men and women are checked when they go wrong.  After home-education has ceased, and when there are no longer parents and teachers to forbid this or that kind of conduct, there comes into play a discipline like that by which the young child is trained to self-guidance.  If the youth entering on the business of life idles away his time and fulfils slowly or unskilfully the duties entrusted to him, there by and by follows the natural penalty:  he is discharged, and left to suffer for awhile the evils of a relative poverty.  On the unpunctual man, ever missing his appointments of business and pleasure, there continually fall the consequent inconveniences, losses, and deprivations.  The tradesmen who charges too high a rate of profit, loses his customers, and so is checked in his greediness.  Diminishing practice teaches the inattentive doctor to bestow more trouble on his patients.  The too credulous creditor and