George Gregory
Essays Historical and Moral
Of Education
「1785」 George Gregory, “Of Education,” in Essays Historical and Moral 「archive.org」 (London, 1785).
In the succeeding period of childhood, the seeds of cruelty and other vices are sedulously cultivated. The tricks, the mischief, the wanton brutalities of children are esteemed by weak persons as special marks of spirit and vivacity; but their future life too often demonstrates these to have been the commencement of a depravity, which is destined to bring down the grey hairs of their fond and deluded parents with sorrow to the grave. The heart that can feel pleasure in the torture of one of the brute creation, can never be the abode of justice or philanthropy.¹ A habit of cruelty shuts the door upon all virtue, public or private; it plucks up every noble and generous feeling by the roots, and conducts to villainy, profligacy, and the gallows. Compassion, generosity, and that unerring rule of justice, to do to others as you would they should do unto you, ought incessantly to be inculcated in children; not to inculcate them is to countenance the opposite vices; and vices thus introduced meet but too general an approbation in the world.
I fear the DISCIPLINE of the ROD may not with any degree of safety be wholly laid aside; but its severest exertions should be reserved for the correction of vice. Among these, LYING, FRAUD, or CRUELTY should never escape. The ideas of justice inculcated in children should be abstract and general; not confined to a single species, but extended to all animated nature; and this not only for the sake of the brute creation, who certainly have this equitable claim upon us, but for the sake of the children themselves. Almost every great principle of morality will apply to our conduct towards inferior animals, as well as towards our fellow men; and if a breach be allowed in one case, a little sophistry will easily adapt the excuse to the other. In fine, from the correction of very instance of rapine or inhumanity, the pupils will imbibe a delicacy of virtue, which will probably extend to their whole future conduct.
¹Forgive me, reader, if I trespass against the rules of decorum, in introducing myself@ But I cannot help esteeming it a duty to mention, that if any principles of benevolence, gratitude, and generosity, exist in this breast, I owe them to the lessons of general humanity which I received in my earliest years from a gentle and compassionate parent, who would never suffer the meanest of the animal creation to be wantonly tortured.
