both greater and more continued.  Just consider how disastrous would be the result if this empirical method were pursued from the beginning.  Suppose it were possible for parents to take upon themselves the physical sufferings entailed on their children by ignorance and awkwardness; and that while bearing these evil consequences they visited on their children certain other evil consequences, with the view of teaching them the impropriety of their conduct.  Suppose that when a child, who had been forbidden to meddle with the kettle, spilt boiling water on its foot, the mother vicariously assumed the scald and gave a blow in place of it; and similarly in all other cases.  Would not the daily mishaps be sources of far more anger than now?  Would there not be chronic ill-temper on both sides?  Yet an exactly parallel policy is pursued in after-years.  A father who beats his boy for carelessly or wilfully breaking a sister’s toy, and then himself pays for a new toy, does substantially this same thing—­inflicts an artificial penalty on the transgressor, and takes the natural penalty on himself:  his own feelings and those of the transgressor being alike needlessly irritated.  Did he simply require restitution to be made, he would produce far less heart-burning.  If he told the boy that a new toy must be bought at his, the boy’s, cost; and that his supply of pocket-money must be withheld to the needful extent; there would be much less disturbance of temper on either side:  while in the deprivation afterwards felt, the boy would experience the equitable and salutary consequence.  In brief, the system of discipline by natural reactions is less injurious to temper, both because it is perceived to be nothing more than pure justice, and because it in great part substitutes the impersonal agency of Nature for the personal agency of parents.

Whence also follows the manifest corollary, that under this system the parental and filial relation, being a more friendly, will be a more influential one.  Whether in parent or child, anger, however caused, and to whomsoever directed, is detrimental.  But anger in a parent towards a child, and in a child towards a parent, is especially detrimental; because it weakens that bond of sympathy which is essential to beneficent control.  From the law of association of ideas, it inevitably results, both in young and old, that dislike is contracted towards things which in experience are habitually connected with disagreeable feelings.  Or where attachment originally existed, it is diminished, or turned into repugnance, according to the quantity of painful impressions received.  Parental wrath, venting itself in reprimands and castigations, cannot fail, if often repeated, to produce filial alienation; while the resentment and sulkiness of children cannot fail to weaken the affection felt for them, and may even end in destroying it.  Hence the numerous cases in which parents (and especially fathers, who are commonly deputed to inflict the punishment) are