CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
(1918)
THE two words Crime and Punishment have come to us in a conjunction which it is very difficult to separate. Our fathers have told us, and our teachers and theologians have strenuously insisted that the one necessarily entails the other.
The whole of our social order is based upon the idea that if a man commits crime—an offence, that is to say, against the written law of the community—he must be punished for it. If he were not, social order would go to pieces.
But our social order does not lay equal stress upon the idea that if a man lives virtuously he must be rewarded. If a man lives virtuously his reward is in Heaven—that is to say, he takes his chance. His virtue may assist or may hinder his worldly advancement; but we have not yet committed ourselves to the conviction that social order will necessarily go to pieces if virtue is not rewarded. It will only go to pieces if crime is not punished. Society can reconcile itself to the one omission; but it cannot reconcile itself to the other.
This inequality of interest in retribution and reward is based perhaps upon the calculation that while you look after the crimes, the virtues will look after themselves; and that the virtues will not—for lack of Birthday
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