according to precise rules and use of prescribed formulas which help to purge punishment of its personal element.[1] It is the absence of this protective regularity and ceremonial which distinguishes a lynching party from a court and makes it so demoralizing to those who participate. It is formality that makes a difference between civilized execution and mere collective killing.
Ceremony has, however, a far deeper use than the protection of the penal officials. Much of the efficiency of punishment for culprit or spectators lies in attendant circumstances that stir the imagination and excite awe. Punishment must not appear as mere brute force, but as the act of God or of society. By significant ceremonial it must firmly ally itself with current religion and morality.[2] It will not do for the legal protection of society to appear to the evil disposed as a mere case of "dog-eat-dog."[3]
Not only should hanging or whipping be a ceremony but the preliminaries to the inflicting of pain, such as trying or sentencing, should likewise avail themselves of the ceremonial backing. While the efficacy of ceremony will be shown later in studying control of men through their feelings, it needs no psychological analysis to show that court procedure may be made a powerful instrument of intimidation both of accused and of on-lookers. When we note the corrosive flippancy of the daily press it is comprehensible that jurists should defend the grave demeanor, the deliberate pace, the solemn formulas, the prolix and archaic language, the sonorous oaths, the stiff formalities, the rigid and decorous procedure of the court of law. If the process of adjudging imprisonment or death to a man were allowed to
- ↑ "Our records seem to show that the kind of justice which the criminal of old times had most to dread, was the kind which we now associate with the name of Mr. Lynch." Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, Vol. II, p. 578.
- ↑ Probably "characteristic" punishments, such as taking the tongue of the false accuser, or the perjurer's right band may have had some such virtue in a rude time.
- ↑ "This conviction, that crime is all pervasive and that government is one of the tricks of the trade of dog-eat-dog which all are playing, will paralyze the conscience quicker than any other belief that can take possession of the human heart." Amos G. Warner, in Am. Jour, of Sociology, for November 1895, p. 291.
