Wrongdoers.
Another class of our fellow-men whom it is especially hard to love are
those who willfully do wrong. The men who cheat us, and say hateful
things to us; the men who abuse their wives and neglect their families;
the men who grind the faces of the poor, and contrive to live in ease
and luxury on the earnings of the widow and the orphan; the men who
pervert justice and corrupt legislation in order to make money; these
and all wrongdoers exasperate us, and rouse our righteous indignation.
Yet they are our fellow-men. We meet them everywhere. We suffer for
their misdeeds;--and, what is worse, we have to see others, weaker and
more helpless than ourselves, maltreated, plundered, and beaten by these
wretches and villains. Wrongdoing is a great, hard, terrible fact. We
must face it. We must have some clear and consistent principles of
action with reference to these wrongdoers; or else our wrath and
indignation will betray us into the futile attempt to right one wrong by
another wrong; and so drag us down to the level of the wrongdoers
against whom we contend.
THE DUTY.
+The first thing we owe to the wrongdoer is to give him his just
deserts. Wrongdoing always hurts somebody. Justice demands that it shall
hurt the wrongdoer himself.+--The boy who tells a lie treats us as if we
did not belong to the same society, and have the same claim on truth
that he has. We must make him feel that we do not consider him fit to be
on a level with us. We must make him ashamed of himself. The man who
cheats us shows that he is willing to sacrifice our interests to his. We
must show him that we will have no dealings with such a person. The man
who is mean and stingy shows that he cares nothing for us. We must show
him that we despise his miserliness and meanness. The robber and the
murderer show that they are enemies to society. Society must exclude
them from its privileges.
It is the function of punishment to bring the offender to a realizing
sense of the nature of his deed, by making him suffer the natural
consequences of it, or an equivalent amount of privation, in his own
person. Punishment is a favor to the wrongdoer, just as bitter medicine
is a favor to the sick. For without it, he would not appreciate the evil
of his wrongdoing with sufficient force to repent of it, and abandon it.
Plato teaches the true value of punishment in the "Gorgias." "The doing
of wrong is the greatest of evils. To suffer punishment is the way to be
released from this evil. Not to suffer is to perpetuate the evil. To do
wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils; but to do wrong and
not to be punished, is first and greatest of all. He who has done wrong
and has not been punished, is and ought to be the most miserable of all
men; the doer of wrong is more miserable than the sufferer; and he who
escapes punishment more miserable than he who suffers punishment."
+Punishment is the best thing we can do for one who has done
wrong.+--Punishment is not a good in itself. But it is good relatively
to the wrongdoer. It is the only way out of wrong into right. Punishment
need not be brutal or degrading. The most effectual punishment is often
purely mental; consisting in the sense of shame and sorrow which the
offender is made to feel. In some form or other every wrongdoer should
be made to feel painfully the wrongness of his deed. To "spare the rod,"
both literally and metaphorically, is to "spoil the child." The duty of
inflicting punishment, like all duty, is often hard and unwelcome. But
we become partakers in every wrong which we suffer to go unpunished and
unrebuked when punishment and rebuke are within our power.
THE VIRTUE.
+Forgiveness is not inconsistent with justice. It does not do away with
punishment. It spiritualizes punishment; substituting mental for bodily
pains.+--The sense of the evil and shame of wrongdoing, which is the
essence and end of punishment, forgiveness, when it is appreciated,
serves to intensify. Indeed it is impossible to inflict punishment
rightly until you have first forgiven the offender. For punishment
should be inflicted for the offender's good. And not until vengeance has
given way to forgiveness are we able to care for the offender's
well-being.
Forgiveness is a special form of love. It recognizes the humanity of the
offender, and treats him as a brother, even when his deeds are most
unbrotherly. But it cares so much for him that it will not shrink from
inflicting whatever merciful pains may be necessary to deliver him from
his own unbrotherliness. Forgiveness loves not the offense but the man.
It hates the offense chiefly because it injures the man. Its punishment
of the offense is the negative side of its positive devotion to the
person. The command "love your enemies" is not a hard impossibility on
the one hand, nor a soft piece of sentimentalism on the other. It is
possible, because there is a human, loveable side, even to the worst
villain, if we can only bring ourselves to think on that better side,
and the possibilities which it involves. It is practical, because regard
for that better side of his nature demands that we shall make him as
miserable in his wrongdoing as is necessary to lead him to abandon his
wrongdoing, and give the better possibilities of his nature a chance to
develop. The parent who punishes the naughty child loves him not less
but more than the parent who withholds the needed punishment. The state
which suffers crime to go unpunished becomes a nursery of criminals. It
wrongs itself; it wrongs honest citizens; but most of all it wrongs the
criminals themselves whom it encourages in crime by undue lenity. The
object of forgiveness is not to take away punishment, but to make
whatever punishment remains effective for the reformation of the
offender. It is to transfer the seat of suffering from the body, where
its effect is uncertain and indirect, to the mind, where sorrow for
wrongdoing is powerful and efficacious. Every wrong act brings its
penalty with it. In order to induce repentance and reformation that
penalty must in some way be brought home to the one who did the wrong.
Vengeance drives the penalty straight home, refusing to bear any part of
it itself. Forgiveness first takes the penalty upon itself in sorrow for
the wrong, and then invites the wrongdoer to share the sorrow which he
who forgives him has already borne. Vengeance smites the body, and often
drives in deeper the perversity. Forgiveness touches the heart and
gently but firmly draws the heart's affections away from the wrong, into
devotion to the right.
THE REWARD.
+Forgiveness, rightly received, works the reformation of the
offender.+--And to one who ardently loves righteousness there is no joy
comparable to that of seeing a man who has been doing wrong, turn from
it, renounce it, and determine that henceforth he will endeavor to do
right. Contrast heightens our emotions. And there is "joy over one
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons
that need no repentance." Deliverance from wrong is effected by the firm
yet kindly presentation of the right as something still possible for us,
and into which a friend stands ready to welcome us. Reformation is
wrought by that blending of justice and forgiveness which at the same
time holds the wrong abhorrent and the wrongdoer dear. Reformation is
the end at which forgiveness aims, and its accomplishment is its own
reward.
THE TEMPTATION.
+The sight of heinous offenses and outrageous deeds against ourselves or
others tempts us to wreak our vengeance upon the offender.+--This
impulse of revenge served a useful purpose in the primitive condition of
human society. It still serves as the active support of righteous
indignation. But it is blind and rough; and is not suited to the
conditions of civilized life. Vengeance has no consideration for the
true well-being of the offender. It confounds the person with the deed
in wholesale condemnation. It renders evil for evil; it provokes still
further retaliation; and erects a single fault into the occasion of a
lasting feud. It is irrational, brutal, and inhuman; it is dangerous and
degrading.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+The absence of forgiveness in dealing with wrongdoers leads to undue
severity.+--The end of punishment being to bring the offender to realize
the evil of his deed and to repent of it, punishment should not be
carried beyond the point which is necessary to produce that result. To
continue punishment after genuine penitence is manifested is to commit a
fresh wrong ourselves. "If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he
repent, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in a day,
and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive
him." To ignore an unrepented wrong, and to continue to punish a
repented wrong, are equally wide of the mark of that love for the
offender which metes out to him both justice and forgiveness according
to his needs. All punishment which is not tempered with forgiveness is
brutal; and brutalizes both punisher and punished. It hardens the heart
of the offender; and itself constitutes a new offense against him.
These principles apply strictly to relations between individuals. In the
case of punishment by the state, the necessity of self-protection; of
warning others; and of approximate uniformity in procedure; added to the
impossibility of getting at the exact state of mind of the offender by
legal processes, render it necessary to inflict penalties in many cases
which are more severe than the best interest of the individual offenders
requires. To meet such cases, and to mitigate the undue severity of
uniform penalties when they fall too heavily on individuals, all
civilized nations give the power of pardon to the executive.
+Whether the penalty be in itself light or severe, it should always be
administered in the endeavor to improve and reform the character of the
offender.+--The period of confinement in jail or prison should be made a
period of real privation and suffering; but it should be especially the
privation of opportunity for indulgence in idleness and vice; and the
painfulness of discipline in acquiring the knowledge and skill necessary
to make the convict a self-respecting and self-supporting member of
society, after his term of sentence expires.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+Lenity ignores the wrong; and by ignoring it, becomes responsible for
its repetition.+--Lenity is sentimentality bestowed on criminals. It
treats them in the manner most congenial to its own feelings, instead of
in the way most conducive to their good. Forgiveness is regard for the
offender in view of his ability to renounce the offense and try to do
better in the future. Lenity confounds offender and offense in a
wholesale and promiscuous amnesty. The true attitude toward the
wrongdoer must preserve the balance set forth by the lawgiver of Israel
as characteristic of Israel's God, "full of compassion and gracious,
slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin: and _that will
by no means clear the guilty_." Lenity which "clears the guilty" is
neither mercy, nor graciousness, nor compassion, nor forgiveness. Such
lenity obliterates moral distinctions; disintegrates society; corrupts
and weakens the moral nature of the one who indulges in it; and confirms
in perversity him on whom it is bestowed.
THE PENALTY.
+Severity and lenity alike increase the perversity of the
offender.+--Severity drives the offender into fresh determination to do
wrong; and intrenches him behind the conception that he has been treated
unfairly. He is made to think that all the world is against him, and he
sees no reason why he should not set himself against the world. Lenity
leads him to think the world is on his side no matter what he does; and
so he asks himself why he should take the trouble to mend his ways.
Lenity to others leads us to be lenient toward ourselves; and we commit
wrong in expectation of that lenient treatment which we are in the habit
of according to others. Severity to others makes us ashamed to ask for
mercy when we need it for ourselves. Furthermore, knowing there is no
mercy in ourselves, we naturally infer that there is none in others. We
disbelieve in forgiveness; and our disbelief hides from our eyes the
forgiveness, which, if we had more faith in its presence, we might
find. Hence the unforgiving man can find no forgiveness for himself in
time of need; he sinks to that level of despair and confirmed
perversity, to which his own unrelenting spirit has doomed so many of
his erring brothers.