A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

Punishment is not Reformative––If punishment were necessarily reformative, and able to cure us all of those ’sins we have a mind to,’ why, the world would be a very good world; for no manner of sin escapes its present punishment. The fact is, not that punishment is unnecessary or that it is useless, but that it is inadequate and barely touches our aim; which is, not visitation for the offence, but the correction of that fault of character of which the offence is the outcome. Jemmy tells lies and we punish him; and by so doing we mark our sense of the offence; but, probably, no punishment could be invented drastic enough to cure Jemmy of telling lies in the future; and this is the thing to be aimed at. No, we must look deeper; we must find out what weak place in character, what false habit of thinking, leads Jemmy to tell lies, and we must deal with this false habit in the only possible way, by forming the contrary habit of true thinking, which will make Jemmy grow up a true man. ‘I think I have never told a lie since,’ said a lady, describing the single conversation in which her father cured her, when she was a child, of lying by setting up an altogether new train of thought.