- ishment would be needless if the teacher
understood his work. But nowadays teachers are so careless in their corrections that, instead of compelling the scholars to do what they should, they are content to punish them when they have not done it.
Further, if we constrain a boy with stripes, how shall we treat a young man who cannot be flogged, and whose honour should be appealed to to encourage him to study? Add to that, that accidents happen to those who are beaten which decency forbids us to describe, and which are caused by fear and pain. The shame felt by the victims injures them and cows them to such an extent that they fly from the light and sink under their shame. If wise and skilful teachers have not been chosen, it is impossible to say to what extremes of cruelty they may not go, and to what extent they will terrify their pupils.' Bk. 1, iii.
Quintilian addressed the empty air. He spent his efforts in sheer waste, trying to uproot a prejudice which was to last longer than he.
The Jesuits have been charged with the invention of pedagogical flogging—they
