The law courts have re-introduced flogging for criminals. To the best of my knowledge no member of the law profession has protested. If there is a reform movement within the law I never heard of it.

The curse of law is that it works according to precedent, and it is therefore conservative. Our judges hand out sentences in blissful ignorance of later psychology. Last week a boy of eleven was birched for holding up another boy of nine on the highway and demanding tuppence or his life. The attitude of the bench is that fear of another flogging will prevent that boy from turning highwayman again. I admit that fear will cure him of that special vice, but what the bench does not know is that the boy's anti-social energy will take another form. Every act of man is prompted by a wish, and very often this wish is unconscious. And all the birching in the world will not destroy a wish; the most it can do is to change its form.

Without an analysis of the boy no one can tell what unconscious wish impelled him to turn highwayman, but speaking generally a boy expresses his self-assertion in terms of anti-social behaviour only when his education has been bad. I believe that all juvenile delinquency is due to bad education. Our schools enforce passivity on the child; his creative energy is bottled up. No boy who has tools and a bench to work with will express himself by smashing windows. Delinquency is merely displaced social conduct; the motive of the little boy who turned highwayman was essentially the motive of the boy who builds a boat.

Ah! but we have Industrial Schools for bad boys!

I spent an evening with an Industrial School boy of thirteen not long ago. It was an unlovely tale he told me of his life in school. I got the impression of a building half-prison, half-barracks. No one was allowed to go out unless to football matches when the school team was playing. Punishment was stern and frequent.

"One old guy, 'e sends you to the boss for punishment and says you gave 'im an insubordinate look, and you ain't allowed to deny wot 'e says."

"Look here, Jim," I said, "suppose I took you to a free school to-morrow, a school where you could do what you liked, what's the first thing you would do?"

A wild look came into his eyes.

"I'd lay out the blarsted staff," he said tensely.

"But," I laughed, "what would be the point of laying me out if I gave you freedom? What have you got against me?"

"Oh," he said, "I thought you meant if I got freedom in the Industrial
School!"

That school is condemned; if a school produces one boy who hates and fears its teachers, it is a bad school.

I think of the other way, the Homer Lane way.

Homer Lane was superintendent of the little Commonwealth in Dorset. He attended the juvenile courts and begged the magistrates to hand over to him the worst cases they had. He took the children down to Dorset and gave them freedom. He refused to lay down any laws, and naturally the beginning of the Commonwealth was chaos. Lane joined in the anti-social behaviour; he became one of the gang. When the citizens thought that their best way of expressing themselves was to smash windows, Lane helped them to smash them. His marvellous psychological insight will best be illustrated by the story of Jabez.

Jabez was a thoroughly bad character; he had been thief and highwayman, a bully who could fight with science. He came to the Commonwealth and was astonished. He found boys and girls working hard all day, and making their own laws at their citizen meetings at night. Jabez could not understand it, and not understanding he felt hostile.

The citizens lived in cottages, and one night Lane went over to the cottage in which Jabez lived. They were having tea, and Lane sat down beside Jabez.

"What are you always grousing about, Jabez?" he asked. "Don't you like the Commonwealth?"

"No," said Jabez viciously.

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's too respectable for me," said Jabez, and his eyes wandered to the table. "Them fancy cups and saucers! Wot's the good o' things like that to me? I'd like to smash the whole lot o' them."

Lane rose from the table, walked to the fireplace, took up the poker and handed it to Jabez.

"Smash them," he said.

Jabez had all eyes turned towards him. He seized the poker and smashed his cup and saucer.

"Excellent!" cried Lane, "Jabez is making the Commonwealth a better place," and he pushed forward another cup and saucer. These were at once smashed, and Lane proceeded to shove forward the other dishes. But by this time Jabez was beginning to feel queer. Breaking dishes was good fun when you were breaking laws, but here there was no law to break, and Jabez felt that he was doing a foolish thing. He wanted to stop, but he could not see how he was to stop with dignity. Fortunately one of the other inmates of the cottage came to his aid.

"It's all very well for you, Mr. Lane," she said, "but this isn't your cottage, and you are making Jabez break our dishes."

Jabez hailed the idea with delight; he now had an excellent excuse for stopping.

"Right you are!" cried Lane cheerfully, "Jabez will break something else," and he took out his gold watch and placed it on the table.

"Smash that, Jabez."

"No," said Jabez, "I won't smash your watch."

Now Jabez had a saying that if a man were dared to do a thing and he didn't do it he was a coward.

"I dare you to smash the watch."

Jabez seized the poker again.

"What! You dare me!"

"Yes, I dare you."

He looked at the watch for a few seconds; then he threw down the poker and rushed from the room.

Poor Jabez was killed in France. I saw the letters that he wrote to
Lane from the front, and they were the letters of a decent, good boy.

The early history of Jabez was one of constant suppression. Authority was always stepping in and saying: "Don't do that!" As a result Jabez at the age of seventeen was psychically an infant. The infantile desire to break things was suppressed, but it lived on in the unconscious, and years later Jabez found himself behaving like a child of three. The cure was to encourage him to act in his infantile way; by smashing a few cups Jabez got rid of his long pent up infantile wish to destroy. Discipline would have kept the childish wish underground; freedom led to the expression of the wish.

Homer Lane is the apostle of Release. He holds that Authority is fatal for the child; suppression is bad; the only way is to allow the child freedom to express itself in the way it wants to. And because I count among my friends boys and girls who once went to the Little Commonwealth as criminals, I believe that Lane is right. I also believe that the schools will come to see that he was right . . . somewhere about the year 2500.

* * * * *

Conversation to-night in Dauvit's shop turned on Spiritualism. Dauvit is a firm believer, and he often goes to Dundee and Aberdeen to attend sÉances.

"It's just a lot o' blethers," said Jake Tosh contemptuously. "When ye're deid ye're deid, and that's a' aboot it. Na, na, Dauvit, them that sees ghosts is either drunk or daft."

"That's just yer ignorance, Jake," said Dauvit. "Do ye ken whaur
Brazil is?"

"Wha is he?" asked Jake puzzled.

"It's no a he; it's a place. I asked ye that question just to prove that a man that doesna ken his ain world canna speak wi' ony authority o' the next world. Yer mind's ower narrow, Jake; ye've no vision."

"Na, na, Dauvit," laughed Jake, "it winna do. Spooks and things is just a curran nonsense, and no sane man wud believe in them. What do you say, dominie?"

"I am willing to believe that the dead do communicate," I said.

Jake was thoroughly amused.

"It's a queer thing," he said musingly, "that the more eddication a man has the more he believes in rubbish. Here's Dauvit here, a man that reads Shakespeare and Burns and Carlyle, and the dominie there that went through a college, and the both o' you believe things that I stoppit believin' when I was sax year auld. Then there's Sir Oliver Lodge, and Conan Doyle. Oh, aye, the Bible was quite richt when it said: Much learning hath made them mad."

"What do you think happens to the dead, Jake?" I asked.

"As the tree falleth so it lies," quoted Jake. "There's only the twa places after death; if ye're good ye go to Heaven; if ye're bad ye go to Hell. And that's why I say that thae messages from the deid are rubbish, cos if a man's in Heaven he's no going to leave a place like that to come doon to speak to a daft auld cobbler like Dauvit in a wee room doon in Dundee. And if a man's in Hell the Devil will tak good care that he doesna get oot."

I wondered to find that Dauvit had no answer to this. I guessed that Dauvit's silence was due to his early training. He was brought up in the old stern Scots way, and although he has now rejected the old beliefs intellectually, his unconscious still clings to them emotionally. I fancy that if I were very very ill I might go back to my childish fear of Hell-fire, for, in illness old emotions return, and intellect flees. Dauvit would no doubt react in the same way.

* * * * *

Many people seem to have a decided fear of psycho-analysis. A mother writes me from London saying that she would like to send her girl to my new school, only she is afraid that I shall attempt to analyse the children.

The fear of psycho-analysis comes from the general belief that Freud traces every neurosis to early sex experiences. Whether Freud is right or not does not concern the teacher; he deals with normal children, and to try to analyse a normal child appears to me to be unnecessary. The teacher's job is to see that the children are free from fear and free to create; if he does his task well he is preventing neurosis.

A neurosis is the outcome of repression; the neurotic is a person whose libido or life force is bottled up; he can be cured only by letting his pent up emotions free. The aim of education is to allow emotional release, so that there will be no bottling up, and no future neurosis; and this release comes through interest. The boy who hates algebra and has to work examples is getting no release whatever, for his mind is divided; his attention goes to his quadratic equations, but his interest is elsewhere.

Hence I do not think analysis is necessary when children are being freely educated. In an exceptional case a little analysis will do good. If I see a child unhappy, moody, anti-social, a thief, a bully, I consider it my job to make an attempt to find out what is at the back of his mind. With a young boy it is not advisable to tell him the whole truth about himself; the teacher discovers the truth by watching the child at play, by studying his wishes as expressed in his writing, by noting his attitude to his playmates. When he has made his diagnosis the teacher can then make the necessary changes in the boy's environment.

I recall the case of Tommy, aged ten. His class was constructing a Play Town after the fashion set by Caldwell Cook in his delightful book The Play Way. Tommy worked with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm, for he pinched the girls' sand for his railway track. The girls objected, and a regular wordy battle took place. Tommy felt that he was beaten, and he ceased work.

I was not very much surprised when the girls came and told me that Tommy was shying bricks at the railway line he had been so keen on constructing. Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten yards of Play Town. Tommy grinned maliciously. That night the town appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake.

I went to Tommy.

"Why don't you like the Play Town?" I asked.

"Because the girls are too bossy," he said. "It was my town; I began it, and I don't see why they should be in it at all."

"And you want a Play Town all to yourself?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Right ho," I said easily. "Why not start to build one?"

His eyes lit up, and away he ran to lay his foundations. He worked eagerly all day, but at night he seemed dissatisfied.

"I haven't got any railway or houses; Christo won't lend me a bit of his railway, and Gerda has all the houses."

I left him to work out his problem. In the morning he solved it; Christo wouldn't lend him any rails, but if Tommy liked he, Christo, would run his line up to Tommy's town from the class town. Tommy readily agreed. In a week's time Tommy's town was a suburb of the bigger town, and Tommy was appointed President of the whole state. He spent many an hour building his bridges and digging his tunnels. At first he would allow no one to enter his suburb, but in a few days he ceased to claim it as his own, and he worked as a member of the gang.

I think that most anti-social children are like Tommy: when their self-assertion is threatened they react with hostility. The cure for them is to direct their self-assertion to things instead of people. No boy will try to break up a ball game if he has a rabbit hutch to construct.

The danger is that the teacher will often step in when the boy ought to be left to his companions. The gang is the best disciplinarian.

One day a class and I were writing five-minute essays. I would call out a word or a phrase, and we would all start to write. The children loved the method; it allowed so much play for originality. For example, when I gave the word "broken" one girl wrote of her broken doll, another of a broken tramp, another of a broken heart; a boy wrote a witty essay on being stoney broke, another wrote of a broken window.

On this day Wolodia, a boy of eleven, did not want to write essays. I called out a word, and we started to write. Wolodia began to talk loudly.

"Stop it, man," I said impatiently, "you're spoiling our essay."

He grinned and went on talking.

"Oh, shut up!" cried Joy.

"Shan't!" he snapped, and he went on talking.

Diana rose with a determined air.

"We'll chuck him out," she said grimly, and the class seized him and heaved him out. Then they barricaded the door with desks. Wolodia made a big row by hammering on the door, and as a result we could not proceed with our writing.

"Let him in," I suggested.

The class protested.

"He'll sit like a lamb for the rest of the period," I said.

They took away the desk and Wolodia came in. He went to his seat . . . and not a sound came from him during the rest of the period. This incident impressed me greatly; my complaint, Joy's complaint did not affect him, but when the gang was against him he was defeated. It was a beautiful instance of the force of public opinion.

Cases of stealing should be treated by analysis. Moral lectures are useless; the cause lies in the unconscious, and the moral lecture does not touch the unconscious. Nor does punishment affect the root cause of the delinquency. The teacher must dig down into the child's unconscious in order to find the cause.

An illuminating book for all teachers and parents to read is Healy's Mental Disorders and Misconduct. He shows that stealing is very often a symptomatic act. The mechanism of many cases is something like this: a child has been punished for sexual activities; later he breaks into a store and steals an article. Sex activities and thieving have this in common, that they are both forbidden, but the boy has found that much more ado is made about sex activities than about stealing. So when he is actuated by a sexual urge he dare not indulge it; but his sexual wish finds a substitute; it goes out to the associated forbidden thing . . . the article on the store counter.

We see the same sort of mechanism in the neurotic patient; she fears her own sex impulses, and because she dare not admit her sex wishes into consciousness she projects her fear on to dogs or mice or rats. All phobias—fear of closed places, fear of open places, fear of heights—are displaced fears; the sufferer is really afraid of his own unconscious wishes.

I do not say that all juvenile stealing is due to repressed sex. Stealing may mean to a boy a method of self-assertion; it may mean that thus he rebels against authority of father and teacher; it may be the result of any one of a dozen causes. But whatever the cause stealing is always associated with unhappiness, and the teacher must try to cure the unhappiness.

In my Dominie's Log I confessed that I liked to cheat the railway company, and I excused it on the ground that "a ten-mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world." That was a delightful bit of rationalisation. The real reason for my delinquency lay in my unconscious. As a child I impotently rebelled against the authority of parents and teachers. Later in life I unconsciously identified the railway company with the authorities of my infancy. Authority said: "Don't do that or you will be smacked"; the railway company put up a notice saying: "Don't travel without a ticket or you'll be fined forty shillings."

My rebellion was really a rebellion against authority. This may seem to be a far-fetched explanation, but the fact remains that now that I have discovered the reason I have no more desire to cheat the railway company.

* * * * *

Old Jeems Broon was buried to-day, and Dauvit went to the funeral. He came back chuckling.

"What's the joke, Dauvit?" I asked.

"The burial service," laughed Dauvit. "You ken what sort o' a man Jeems was; an auld sinner if there ever was a sinner in Tarbonny, a bad auld scoondrel. Weel, Jeems hadna been at the kirk for twenty years, and of coorse the minister didna ken ony thing aboot him. So when he gave the funeral prayer he referred to auld Jeems as 'this holy man whose life stands as an example to those still tarrying in the flesh.' Goad, but I burst oot laughin'! I did that!"

"Had I been the minister," said I, "I should certainly have made a few inquiries about Jeems."

"But there's a better story than that aboot the minister," went on Dauvit with a laugh. "Mag Currie's little lassie had the diphtheria, and at the end o' the week the minister was asked to come oot to tak' a burial service in Mag's bed room. Man, he was eloquent! He spoke earnestly aboot this flower plucked before it had reached its full bloom, this innocent life so sadly cut off; he was most touchin' when he turned to Mag and her man and said: 'Mourn not for those hands that never did wrong, the lisping tongue that never spoke evil, the wide pure eyes that looked their love for you.'"

"I suppose the parents broke down at that," I said.

"Not they!" chuckled Dauvit, "for the corpse wasna their lassie ava; it was auld Drucken Findlay the lodger."

I always like to hear Dauvit talk about ministers, and I encouraged him to go on.

"It's a very queer thing, dominie, that a body ay wants to laugh at the wrong time. In the kirk and at a funeral—that's when I want to laugh.

"I mind when the minister was awa' for his holidays, and there was an auld minister frae the Heelands cam' to tak' his place. This auld man had a habit o' readin' a verse and syne stoppin' to explain it to the congregation.

"Weel aweel, wan Sunday he was readin' a chapter frae the Auld Testament, and he cam' to the words: 'And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto Hosea.' So he looks at the congregation ower his specs and he says: 'The Angel of the Lord appeared unto Hosea.' Now, prethren, we must ask ourselves this important question: Was Hosea afraid? No, Hosea was not afraid. You would have been afraid, prethren; I would have been afraid. You and I would have begun to quake and tremble, but Hosea was not afraid; he was a prave man, a pold man. When we are in trouble let us remember that Hosea was not afraid.'

"So the auld man he turns ower the page and reads the next verse: 'And
Hosea was sore afraid.'"

"What did he say then?" I asked.

"He was a cunnin' auld deevil," said Dauvit, "for he gave a bit cough and says: 'Prethren, that is a wrong translation from the original Hebrew.'"

"I don't think you like ministers, Dauvit," I said.

He paused in his efforts to place a new needle in his sewing-machine.

"No, man, I do not," he said slowly. "Nowadays the kirk is just a job like anything else; men go in for it for the loaves and fishes mostly, and their prayers never get past the roof. And as for the congregation, the kirk is just a respectable sort o' society. I tell ye, dominie, that releegion is deid. At least, Christianity is deid. That was bound to come; flowers, folk, hooses, trees, horses, aye, and nations, have a birth, a youth, middle age, auld age, and then death. It's the law o' nature, and a religion is no exception."

"True, O philosopher!" I said, "but there is always new life, and new life comes from the old. The flower dies and its seed lives; man dies and his seed inherit the earth. Christianity dies and—and what?"

"That may be," he said thoughtfully. "It may be that the new religion will grow from the seed o' the deid Christianity; that I canna say. What I do say is that ministers are oot-o'-date; they are doin' useless labour . . . when they're no fishin' and curlin'."