There is no justification for punishment which is merely revengeful.
Next arises the question: "In what sense is punishment a reformatory agent?". We have seen that the will is determined by sensation and intellect, and if we affect these we shall affect the will. Take the case of a man who commits a theft; his will is moved to the action of stealing by the desire to possess an attractive object, and his judgment being uninformed and his imagination defective, the desire to possess proves stronger than his representation of punishment following on discovery, and his balancing of advantage and disadvantage ends in pronouncing the theft to be advantageous. The stronger motive determines the will and he steals. The theft is found out and the man is punished. Once again at liberty, a similar temptation to steal recurs. There is still the desire to possess, but the memory of the punishment now conflicts with the desire, the judgment balances the pleasure of possession and the pain of punishment, and the will is determined against the theft. Here punishment has effected its object: it has strengthened the before too weak motive, and has made for morality. The same brain, in the same environment, under the same impulses, will act in the same way; the same brain, in the same environment, under different impulses, will act in a different way. That is the rationale of punishment.
Turning to the treatment of crime in our present Society, we find it condemned by its failure as a reforming agent, as a preventive of crime. The same criminal comes back time after time to the court of justice, hardened not reformed. In December, 1884, the following paragraph appeared in many daily papers:
"Over Two Hundred Times Convicted.
Jane Kirk is a typical instance: there are scores of such cases, though few perhaps are such centenarians in misdeeds as this unhappy woman. Her offences are all "petty";
