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A PERSIAN PEARL AND OTHER ESSAYS
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ADDRESS AT THE GRAVE OF JOHN P. ALTGELD
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REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART
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CRIME AND CRIMINALS
An address delivered to the prisoners in the Chicago County
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RESIST NOT EVIL
A startling and vivid arraignment of the doctrine of force and
punishment. In press. 75 cents.
TALES FROM THE COURTS
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_Resist Not Evil_
_BY
CLARENCE S. DARROW_
[Illustration]
_CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
MCMIII_
Copyright 1902
By
CLARENCE S. DARROW
TYPOGRAPHY BY
MARSH, AIKEN & CURTIS COMPANY, CHICAGO
PRESS OF THOS. P. HALPIN & CO., CHICAGO
[Illustration]
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
_Matthew 7:1._
Ye have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil,
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also.
_Matthew 5:38, 39._
PREFACE
It is not claimed that the following pages contain any new ideas. They
were inspired by the writings of Tolstoy, who was the first, and in
fact the only, author of my acquaintance who ever seemed to me to place
the doctrine of non-resistance upon a substantial basis. After reading
Tolstoy I determined to make a careful study of the subject, but on a
thorough search of book stores and libraries could find next to nothing
dealing with the question, while the shelves were crowded with literature
extolling the glories of war and the beneficence of patriotism.
The first part of this volume which deals with the state is very
fragmentary, and in no wise so complete as can be found in many other
volumes, but in the portion which deals with crime and punishment, I have
found a much newer field, and one which has generally been discussed by
those who have little practical knowledge of the machinery of courts of
justice.
It has been my purpose to state the reasons which appeal to me in support
of the doctrine of non-resistance, rather than to give authorities to
sustain the theories advanced. Still, I believe that the student who
is interested in the subject of criminology, and wishes to carefully
investigate crime and punishment, will find that most of the great
historians, philosophers, and thinkers will amply corroborate the
views herein set forth, as to the cause of crime, and the evil and
unsatisfactory results of punishment.
CLARENCE S. DARROW.
CHICAGO, November 1, 1902.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE NATURE OF THE STATE 11
II. ARMIES AND NAVIES 20
III. THE PURPOSE OF ARMIES 33
IV. CIVIL GOVERNMENT 41
V. THEORY OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 51
VI. REMEDIAL EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT 59
VII. CAUSE OF CRIME 77
VIII. THE PROPER TREATMENT OF CRIME 92
IX. IMPOSSIBILITY OF JUST JUDGMENT 98
X. THE JUDGE OF THE CRIMINAL 106
XI. THE MEASURE OF PUNISHMENT 112
XII. WHO DESERVES PUNISHMENT 127
XIII. NATURAL LAW AND CONDUCT 131
XIV. RULES GOVERNING PENAL CODES AND THEIR VICTIMS 141
XV. THE MACHINERY OF JUSTICE 153
XVI. THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF VIOLENCE 165
Resist Not Evil
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE NATURE OF THE STATE
In this heroic age, given to war and conquest and violence, the precepts
of peace and good will seem to have been almost submerged. The pulpit,
the press, and the school unite in teaching patriotism and in proclaiming
the glory and beneficence of war; and one may search literature almost in
vain for one note of that “Peace on earth, and good will toward men” in
which the world still professes to believe; and yet these benign precepts
are supposed to be the basis of all the civilization of the western world.
The doctrine of non-resistance if ever referred to is treated with
derision and scorn. At its best the doctrine can only be held by
dreamers and theorists, and can have no place in daily life. Every
government on earth furnishes proof that there is nothing practical or
vital in its teachings. Every government on earth is the personification
of violence and force, and yet the doctrine of non-resistance is as old
as human thought—even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon
the earth.
The doctrine of non-resistance to evil does not rest upon the words of
Christ alone. Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, show the evil and
destruction of war, of conquest, of violence, and of hatred, and have
taught the beneficence of peace, of forgiveness, of non-resistance to
evil. But modern thought is not content to rest the conduct of life upon
the theories of moralists. The rules of life that govern men and states
must to-day be in keeping with science and conform to the highest reason
and judgment of man. It is here that non-resistance seems to have failed
to make any practical progress in the world. That men should “turn the
other cheek,” should “love their enemies,” should “resist not evil,” has
ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays, to round
a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken for
granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for
strong characters or great states.
It is idle to discuss “non-resistance” in its effect upon life and the
world without adopting some standard of excellence by which to judge
results. Here, as elsewhere in human conduct, after all is said and done,
men must come back to the fundamental principle that the conduct which
makes for life is wise and right. Nature in her tireless labor has ever
been developing a higher order and a completer life. Sometimes for long
periods it seems as if the world were on the backward course, but even
this would prove that life really is the highest end to be attained.
Whatever tends to happiness tends to life,—joy is life and misery is
death.
In his long and toilsome pilgrimage, man has come to his present estate
through endless struggle, through brutal violence administered and
received. And the question of the correctness of non-resistance as a
theory, like any other theory, does not depend upon whether it can be
enforced and lived now or to-morrow, but whether it is the highest ideal
of life that is given us to conceive. In one sense nothing is practical
excepting what is; everything must have been developed out of all the
conditions of life that now exist or have existed on the earth. But to
state this means little in the settlement of ethical questions, for man’s
future condition depends quite as much upon his mental attitude as upon
any other fact that shapes his course.
Everywhere it seems to have been taken for granted that force and
violence are necessary to man’s welfare upon the earth. Endless volumes
have been written, and countless lives been sacrificed in an effort to
prove that one form of government is better than another; but few seem
seriously to have considered the proposition that all government rests on
violence and force, is sustained by soldiers, policemen and courts, and
is contrary to the ideal peace and order which make for the happiness and
progress of the human race. Now and then it is even admitted that in the
far distant ages yet to come men may so far develop toward the angelic
that political governments will have no need to be. This admission, like
the common concept, presumes that governments are good; that their duties
undertaken and performed consist in repressing the evil and the lawless,
and protecting and caring for the helpless and the weak.
If the history of the state proved that governing bodies were ever formed
for this purpose or filled this function, there might be some basis for
the assumption that government is necessary to preserve order and to
defend the weak. But the origin and evolution of the political state
show quite another thing—it shows that the state was born in aggression,
and that in all the various stages through which it has passed its
essential characteristics have been preserved.
The beginnings of the state can be traced back to the early history of
the human race when the strongest savage seized the largest club and
with this weapon enforced his rule upon the other members of the tribe.
By means of strength and cunning he became the chief and exercised this
power, not to protect the weak but to take the good things of the earth
for himself and his. One man by his unaided strength could not long keep
the tribe in subjection to his will, so he chose lieutenants and aids,
and these too were taken for their strength and prowess, and were given a
goodly portion of the fruits of power for the loyalty and help they lent
their chief. No plans for the general good ever formed a portion of the
scheme of government evolved by these barbarous chiefs. The great mass
were slaves, and their lives and liberty held at the absolute disposal
of the strong.
Ages of evolution have only modified the rigors of the first rude states.
The divine right to rule, the absolute character of official power, is
practically the same to-day in most of the nations of the world as with
the early chiefs who executed their mandates with a club. The ancient
knight who, with battle-ax and coat of mail, enforced his rule upon the
weak, was only the forerunner of the tax-gatherer and tax-devourer of
to-day. Even in democratic countries, where the people are supposed to
choose their rulers, the nature of government is the same. Growing from
the old ideas of absolute power, these democracies have assumed that some
sort of government was indispensable to the mass, and no sooner had they
thrown off one form of bondage than another yoke was placed upon their
necks, only to prove in time that this new burden was no less galling
than the old. Neither do the people govern in democracies more than
in any other lands. They do not even choose their rulers. These rulers
choose themselves and by force and cunning and intrigue arrive at the
same results that their primitive ancestor reached with the aid of a club.
And who are these rulers without whose aid the evil and corrupt would
destroy and subvert the defenceless and the weak? From the earliest time
these self-appointed rulers have been conspicuous for all those vices
that they so persistently charge to the common people whose rapacity,
cruelty and lawlessness they so bravely curb. The history of the past
and the present alike proves beyond a doubt that if there is, or ever
was any large class, from whom society needed to be saved, it is those
same rulers who have been placed in absolute charge of the lives and
destinies of their fellow men. From the early kings who, with blood-red
hands, forbade their subjects to kill their fellow men, to the modern
legislator, who, with the bribe money in his pocket, still makes bribery
a crime, these rulers have ever made laws not to govern themselves but to
enforce obedience on their serfs.
The purpose of this autocratic power has ever been the same. In the early
tribe the chief took the land and the fruits of the earth, and parceled
them amongst his retainers who helped preserve his strength. Every
government since then has used its power to divide the earth amongst
the favored few and by force and violence to keep the toiling, patient,
suffering millions from any portion of the common bounties of the world.
In many of the nations of the earth the real governing power has stood
behind the throne, has suffered their creatures and their puppets to be
the nominal rulers of nations and states, but in every case the real
rulers are the strong, and the state is used by them to perpetuate their
power and serve their avarice and greed.