call[1] the rewards and punishments us’d to brute beasts analogical; and say, that beating them and giving them victuals, have only the shadow of rewards and punishments. Nor are capital punishments without their use among beasts and birds. Rorarius tells us,[2] that they crucify lions in Africa to drive away other lions from their cities and towns; and that travelling thro’ the country of Juliers, he observ’d, they hanged up wolves to secure their flocks. And in like manner with us, men hang up crows and rooks to keep birds from their corn, as they hang up murderers in chains to deter other murderers. But I need not go to brutes for examples of the usefulness of punishments on necessary agents. Punishments are not without effect on some idiots and madmen, by restraining them to a certain degree; and they are the very means by which the minds of children, are form’d by their parents. Nay, punishments have plainly a better effect on children, than on grown persons; and more easily form them to virtue and discipline, than they change the vicious habits of grown persons, or plant new habits in
Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/88
84
An Inquiry concerning
