Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/555

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541
ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DETERMINISM.
[Vol. II.

what the hideous and discordant are to the aesthetic feelings. It is perfectly reasonable for us to feel pain and displeasure when a crime is committed. And this distaste need not vanish because we realize that the crime is simply the objective manifestation of the criminal's character, which itself is the outcome of inheritance and environment. Nor does this knowledge forbid us to punish the evil doer; on the contrary, the more we emphasize the fact that the crime is the effect of the action of a man's environment upon his innate character, the more evident is it that what should be done is to introduce him into such new conditions as shall be suited to modify his character in such a way as may be desirable. Hence, punishment as reformatory is in perfect harmony with the determinists' contention. The notion that one of the most important functions of punishment is the moral restoration of the criminal, which is being gradually accepted by students of social science, must make headway just in proportion as the connection between crime and social conditions is clearly recognized. Of this regenerative work of punishment the Elmira Reformatory in the State of New York is a grand object-lesson. In a recent article in the Fortnightly Review, its superintendent, General Brockway, to whom the singular success of the institution is mainly owing, has the following suggestive words: "During the sixteen years of the existence of this Reformatory the writer has personally examined every prisoner admitted, amounting to considerably more than five thousand, with increasing charitableness for their crimes. The impression deepens that a man's character is not altogether a matter of his own free choice, it is formed by myriad influences, pre-natal and otherwise, largely beyond his own control; and besides, the responsibility of society for crimes is by no means inconsiderable. Crimes indicate character, and character is but the preponderance of habitude, a resultant of the impressional life and of heredity"

But while this recognition of crime as the outgrowth of given conditions leads to that large charity of which General Brockway is, in deeds as well as words, the eloquent expositor, yet it is entirely consistent with the retention of punishment,