Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/318

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304
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

considerably above necessaries, and yet beneath the highest pitch of indulgence, room is given to operate both by reduction and by increase of luxury, without either mischief or pampering; and, the sensibility in early years being very keen in those heads, the motive power is great. Having in view the necessities of discipline with the young, the habitual regimen in food should be pitched neither too low nor too high to permit of such variations. It is the misfortune of poverty that this means of influence is greatly wanting; the next lower depth to the delinquent child is the application of the stick.

These are the chief departments of organic sensibility that contain the motives made use of in reward and punishment. The inflictions of caning and flogging operate upon the organ of the sense of touch, yet, in reality, the effect is one to be classed among the pains of organic life, rather than among tactile sensations; it is a pain resulting from injury or violence to the tissue in the first instance, and if carried far is destructive of life. Like all physical acute pains it is a powerful deterring influence, and is doubtless the favorite punishment of every age and every race of mankind. The limitations to its use demand a rigorous handling; but the consideration of these is mixed up with motives afterward to be adverted to.

The ordinary five senses contain, in addition to their intellectual functions, many considerable sensibilities to pleasure and pain. The pleasures can be largely made use of as incentives to conduct. The pains might of course be also employed in the same way; but with the exceptions already indicated they very rarely are. We do not punish by bad odors, nor by bitter tastes. Harsh and grating sounds may be very torturing, but they are not used in discipline. The pains of sight reach the highest acuteness, but as punishment they are found only in the most barbarous codes.

Postponing a review of the principles of punishment generally, we approach the most perplexing department of motives—the higher Emotions. Few of the simple sensational effects are obtained in purity, that is, without the intermingling of emotions.

2. The Emotions.—One large department of psychology is made up of the classification, definition, and analysis of the Emotions. The applications of a complete theory of Emotion are numerous, and the systematic expansion must be such as to cope with all these applications. We here narrow the subject to what is indispensable for the play of motives in education.

First of all, it is necessary to take note of the large region of Sociability, comprising the social emotions and affections. Next is the department of Anti-social feeling—Anger, Malevolence, and Lust of Domination. Taking both the sources and the ramifications of these two leading groups, we cover perhaps three-fourths of all the sensibility that rises above the senses proper. They do not indeed exhaust the fountains of emotion, but they leave no other that can rank as of first-