has uncomfortable results. And Society's calculation, in thus punishing him, is (or has been hitherto) that it is a less troublesome and expensive way of making him cease to be a nuisance, than educating him, or employing him, or reforming the social conditions which have produced him.
So long as we believe that Society is right in that calculation, so long, I suppose, shall we continue to advocate punishment; but when we come to believe that Society is wrong, we shall begin to advocate education, employment, social reform, and, above all, human sympathy and understanding as a substitute; with the idea that they may gradually do away with the necessity for punishment.
But pending that consummation so devoutly to be wished, most of us will probably continue to believe that punishment is just and right; and will find it very difficult to think of Society, and of ourselves—as all equally criminal along with the individual whom our social contempt and neglect have de-socialised and made a fit recipient for punitive treatment.
The temptation to think that punishment is just and right has been with us from time immemorial; it is probably arboreal, certainly neolithic; and therefore, to our atavistic instincts, it is supremely sacred. We have got it firmly into our heads that punishment is a superior ordering of consequences. And as the law of cause and effect which we see operating in nature is the basis of our moral
