Consequently such of our laws as are not merely the intimidations by
which tyrannies are maintained under pretext of law, can be obeyed
through the exercise of a quite common degree of reasoning power and
self-control. Most men and women can endure the ordinary annoyances
and disappointments of life without committing murderous assaults. They
conclude therefore that any person can refrain from such assaults if he
or she chooses to, and proceed to reinforce self-control by threats of
severe punishment. But in this they are mistaken. There are people, some
of them possessing considerable powers of mind and body, who can no more
restrain the fury into which a trifling mishap throws them than a dog
can restrain himself from snapping if he is suddenly and painfully
pinched. People fling knives and lighted paraffin lamps at one another
in a dispute over a dinner-table. Men who have suffered several long
sentences of penal servitude for murderous assaults will, the very day
after they are released, seize their wives and cast them under drays
at an irritating word. We have not only people who cannot resist an
opportunity of stealing for the sake of satisfying their wants, but even
people who have a specific mania for stealing, and do it when they are
in no need of the things they steal. Burglary fascinates some men as
sailoring fascinates some boys. Among respectable people how many are
there who can be restrained by the warnings of their doctors and the
lessons of experience from eating and drinking more than is good for
them? It is true that between self-controlled people and ungovernable
people there is a narrow margin of moral malingerers who can be made to
behave themselves by the fear of consequences; but it is not worth while
maintaining an abominable system of malicious, deliberate, costly and
degrading ill-treatment of criminals for the sake of these marginal
cases. For practical dealing with crime, Determinism or Predestination
is quite a good working rule. People without self-control enough for
social purposes may be killed, or may be kept in asylums with a view
to studying their condition and ascertaining whether it is curable.
To torture them and give ourselves virtuous airs at their expense is
ridiculous and barbarous; and the desire to do it is vindictive
and cruel. And though vindictiveness and cruelty are at least human
qualities when they are frankly proclaimed and indulged, they are
loathsome when they assume the robes of Justice. Which, I take it, is
why Shakespear's Isabella gave such a dressing-down to Judge Angelo, and
why Swift reserved the hottest corner of his hell for judges. Also, of
course, why Jesus said "Judge not that ye be not judged" and "If any
man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not" because "he hath one
that judgeth him": namely, the Father who is one with him.
When we are robbed we generally appeal to the criminal law, not
considering that if the criminal law were effective we should not have
been robbed. That convicts us of vengeance.
I need not elaborate the argument further. I have dealt with it
sufficiently elsewhere. I have only to point out that we have been
judging and punishing ever since Jesus told us not to; and I defy anyone
to make out a convincing case for believing that the world has been
any better than it would have been if there had never been a judge,
a prison, or a gallows in it all that time. We have simply added the
misery of punishment to the misery of crime, and the cruelty of the
judge to the cruelty of the criminal. We have taken the bad man, and
made him worse by torture and degradation, incidentally making ourselves
worse in the process. It does not seem very sensible, does it? It would
have been far easier to kill him as kindly as possible, or to label
him and leave him to his conscience, or to treat him as an invalid or
a lunatic is now treated (it is only of late years, by the way, that
madmen have been delivered from the whip, the chain, and the cage; and
this, I presume, is the form in which the teaching of Jesus could have
been put into practice.)