Note 26 — THE SAY OF HAYKAR THE SAGE.[6]
Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2
The barbarous sentiment is Biblical—inspired, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son” (Prov. xiii. 24), and “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. xix. 18). Compare the Arab equivalent, “The green stick is of the trees of Paradise” (Pilgrimage i. 151). But the neater form of the saw was left to uninspired writers; witness “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” which appears in Ray’s proverbs, and is immortalised by Hudibras:—
Love is a boy by poets styled,
Then spare the rod and spoil the child. (ii. 1, 843).
It is to the eternal credit of John Locke, the philosopher, that in an age of general brutality he had the moral courage, to declare, “Beating is the worst and therefore the last means to be used in the correction of children.”