essential condition of social development is enforcement, where
necessary, of peace and order by adequate means. The criminal law
corresponds to one part of this process. The whole social system
includes machinery for prevention, for reformation and for education, as
well as for punishment; and it is only when taken in its relation to
other parts of the system, that we can give the full justification. Its
methods are, as I have said, obviously full of imperfections, from the
purely moral point of view. If we consider it as an isolated fact,
comparably to the interference of a quasi-supernatural power, which
clutches an offender here and there, and punishes him simply to frighten
others, the arbitrary and unequal nature of the proceeding assumes an
air of injustice. In fact, if you take the extreme individualist view,
according to which each man is an independent unit, while society
represents a force impinging upon him from without, it always becomes
difficult to introduce the conception of justice without ending in the
approval of anarchy. When, however, we consider the social organisation
as including all the means of civilising society, of strengthening the
general spirit of order, as well as acting upon the fears of the
disorderly, we have to take wider considerations into account. We become
sensible, in the first place, of the importance of the principle that
punishment should never be substituted for prevention. Wherever it is
possible to remove temptations, or take precautions which make crime
impossible, we can have no excuse for adopting the blundering and
unsatisfactory system of punishing those who have committed it. We
admit, that is, that the criminal law, though absolutely necessary, is
an essentially clumsy contrivance, to be used only when other methods
fail. When certain punishments have been condemned as brutalising, it
has been replied that the persons punished were already so brutal that
it is impossible to make them worse. But the brutalising influence is
even more objectionable as it applies to the legislator than as it
applies to the criminal. To make up for neglect of appropriate
precautions by severity against the offender, is to adopt the
necessarily arbitrary method in which chance must always play a part in
place of more effective and civilising methods. Frugality in applying
punishment is desirable as a guarantee that we are acting in the proper
spirit. An Indian official was asked why the native police were disposed
to use torture for the detection of crime. The cause was, he said,
mainly from laziness: it was so much easier to sit in the shade, rubbing
red pepper in a poor devil's eyes, than to go about in a hot sun
collecting evidence. So, it would be very much easier to inflict cruel
punishment than to try to remove the causes of crime; and a resolution
never to use the more brutal methods is not, as I think, to be regarded
as a proof of weak sentimentalism, but as a judicious self-denying
ordinance, imposed upon society by itself, as binding it always to
adopt, as far as it possibly can, what is at once the more humane and
the more scientific method. The same principle involves the careful
graduation of punishment. There are, indeed, as I believe, though I
cannot give reasons, cases in which crimes ought to be punished with
death. There are persons of whom we may say that it would have been
better, especially for their neighbours, if they had never been born. "I
am worth inconceivably more for hanging than for any other purpose,"
said the heroic John Brown; and the words may be applied, in a very
different sense, to some of the wretches who occasionally make their
appearance in the courts. To hang such a man is to act upon the
assumption that murderers represent elements which are entirely and
radically anti-social. The only remedy for them is extirpation. But, if
this be admitted, it suggests a sufficient reason for not applying it to
the cases of less gravity, in which such radical incompatibility has not
been demonstrated. Punishment by death, even if necessary, is certainly
a confession of impotence. We are admitting that we can do nothing
better with the man than convert him into a scarecrow for the benefit
of his like. What more, it may be asked, can we do with a criminal? The
obvious reply would be, reform him. Although no one can doubt that
reformation would be an extremely good thing, wherever practicable, it
may be urged that the enterprise is exceedingly difficult; that, in many
cases, it is hopeless; and that we might spend our money and our efforts
to better purpose upon more hopeful materials. And yet, I think that the
answer is the true one, if properly understood, and will suggest the
right meaning to be given to the word "deterrence". So long as we
consider the individual case alone, and merely mean that we are giving
motives to bad men for refraining from particular lines of conduct, the
results, however desirable, are of limited value. But if we consider
deterrence as including or coinciding with reformation, as indicating a
part of the general system of moral pressure by which the classes
exposed to temptation may be gradually raised in the scale of
civilisation, we recognise an acceptable meaning. In fact, if we ask
what is the deterring influence of punishment, we must observe that at
one extreme it will always fail, or only induce a bad man to take
precautions against detection; and that, at the other end of the scale,
there are a great many cases in which it does not come into active
operation at all. You and I, I hope, are not in the least disposed to
assault each other, even though no policeman is present. The bare
thought of resorting to violence, pelting me, say, with rotten eggs, has
not even suggested itself to you, even though I may be making a very
provoking use of my tongue. But there is also an intermediate class of
people upon whom the possibility of having to appear in a police court,
and the strong sense of shame attached to such appearances, is an active
restraining force, tending to limit, and, in cases where the proper
conditions exist, gradually to narrow, the sphere of violence. We, the
peaceable and law-abiding citizens, have gained a right to those
epithets, because we have lived in a sphere where the law has been
habitually enforced. We have ceased to carry deadly weapons about us,
and have established a general condition of good order. The deterring
influence of the criminal law acts, or ought to act, by gradually
spreading that state of mind through a steadily widening circle. The
classes which are still in need of such a support to their moral
instincts are clearly capable of reformation, whatever may be the case
of some of the individuals who break the law. A fighting tribe, which
has been in the habit of resenting every injury by the use of the knife,
may learn, in a very short time, that a court of law settles disputes
more agreeably than a free fight; and may become a most admirable and
efficient part of the society to which it belongs. And the same may be
said of large classes in our own society, which are perfectly capable of
being converted into good citizens, though they may retain certain
propensities developed under a rougher and more brutal system. To employ
excessive and brutalising punishments in order to suppress small
offences, is, therefore, to abandon the aim of civilising, to declare
internecine war against the class, and to regard them simply as a
nuisance to be abated. The effect might be, if the law could be carried
out, to prevent a certain number of crimes; but it must also be to
generate a more dangerous spirit in the class which you regard simply as
dangerous, instead of regarding it as the possible raw materials of a
more civilised and orderly society. Without attempting to dwell upon a
familiar argument, I merely say that this view of the case implies that
the governing power should be regarded, not simply as a machinery for
catching and killing noxious criminals, but as a great civilising
influence, suppressing all temptations to crime, where possible;
preferring prevention, in every practicable case, to punishment, and
making use of the clumsy, though necessary, weapons in the last resort;
and acting by a steady and regulated pressure upon all anti-social
elements. It is only possible to give a satisfactory theory of the jail
and the gallows, when you take them as a subordinate part of the system
which includes reformatories and schools, and due precautions for the
regular preservation of order. The ultimate criterion of justice is not
to be found in any attempt to form a debtor and creditor account between
the government and the individual; but in the civilising influence of
the system, taken as a whole.
And, finally, I come back to the other theory which I have noticed. To
supply the defects of the simply deterrent theory, it has been found
necessary, as I said, to invoke the vindictive theory. We should go, it
was suggested, upon the theory that a criminal is hateful, and,
therefore, that it should be a pleasure to punish him. The feelings of
resentment and moral indignation are parts of our nature, to which the
punishment of the offender affords them a legitimate gratification. Now,
to this, I should reply that, in the first place, I do not admit that
the desire for revenge, as usually understood, can ever be legitimate.
Revenge, as I understand the word, implies a personal feeling. It is
taking pleasure in giving pain to a man because he has given pain to me.
According to my view of morals, any pleasure in causing pain is, so far,
wrong; and the public punishment should be free from all personal
motive. I quite agree with Bentham that we ought not to take a positive
pleasure in the sufferings, even of the worst criminal; and to admit the
legitimacy of such pleasure is to admit an element of pure sentiment to
which it is difficult to assign any precise limits. If you allow
yourself to hate a man so as to take pleasure in his sufferings, you
might justify the infliction of superfluous torture and the old methods
of hanging, drawing, and quartering. To do so is precisely to approve
the ferocious old treatment, to which, as I conceive, the theory of
simple deterrence was an excellent corrective, in so far as it at least
implied a definite limit to the indulgence of fiercer passions. There
is, however, I think, an element of truth in the doctrine. I admit, that
is, that the punishment of a criminal should carry a moral approval, and
not be regarded purely as a measure of convenience. Successful crime
should be regarded with abhorrence. If a man convicted of a grave
offence should be allowed to go without punishment, we should be rightly
aggrieved. It is not, however, that we should take pleasure in his
suffering, but that we should be pained by an example of the practical
impunity of anti-social conduct. The escape of a murderer would, as we
should feel, be a blow to the security of all innocent people. In that
sense, we may take pleasure in his punishment, not in the sense of
positive enjoyment, but, certainly, in the sense of relief from positive
sense of evil. It is, and should be, painful to see the rogues flourish
and honest men droop, and to observe "captive good attending captain
ill". But the pleasure of seeing the necessary equilibrium restored is
different from the pleasure of dwelling upon the sufferings of the
disturber. The practical difference is that, while we regard the
infliction of suffering as necessary, we admit it to be a necessary
evil, and are keenly alive to the inability of keeping it within the
limits fixed by the general necessities of the law.
LUXURY.
Professor Sidgwick has been discussing the ethics of luxury, and,
according to his wont, has been giving fresh interest to a well-worn
topic. I do not wish to dispute anything that he has said, nor do I hope
to clear up problems which he professedly left unsolved. In one sense,
they obviously cannot be solved precisely. Luxury is a relative term,
which cannot be defined in absolute terms. A luxury, in the first place,
is distinguished from a necessary. But, then, one man's necessary may be
another man's luxury. My very existence depends upon conditions with
which another man can dispense. If, again, we admit that there are many
things which, though not absolutely necessary, may rightly be used, if
they can be used without injuring others, we see that we must also take
into account the varying social conditions. If we use luxury, in what
Bentham called the dyslogistic sense, we must distinguish between
necessaries and superfluities, and then divide superfluities into
comforts which may be rightfully enjoyed, and luxuries which cannot be
enjoyed without incurring some degree of moral censure. But the
dividing lines are always shifting. Scott tells somewhere of a
Highlander sleeping on the open moor in a winter night. When he tried to
roll the snow into a pillow his companion kicked it away, as a proof of
disgraceful effeminacy. Most of us would come to a speedy end if we
lived in a social state where such a standard of hardiness was rigidly
enforced. We admit that some kind of pillow may be permitted, if not as
absolutely necessary, as, at least, a pardonable comfort. We shall
probably agree, also, that nobody is to be blamed for using clean sheets
and securing a certain amount of warmth and softness--as much, at least,
as is desirable for sanitary reasons. But if we endeavour to prescribe
precisely how much may be allowed in excess of the necessary, how often
we are to send our sheets to the wash, whether it is right to have lace
upon our pillows, and so forth, we get into problems where any attempt
at precision is obviously illusory. We are the more perplexed by the
question, whether the provision of a bed for ourselves causes other
people to go without a bed, and, perhaps, without supper, or how far we
are bound to take such consequences into account. Without aiming,
therefore, at an impossible precision, I shall try to consider--not what
objects should be called luxuries, or comforts, or necessaries, but what
are the really relevant considerations by which we should endeavour to
guide our judgments.
Luxury is, as I have said, a well-worn topic. Saints and philosophers in
all ages, have denounced the excessive love of material enjoyments, and
set examples of a more or less thorough-going asceticism. It was--to go
no further back--one of the favourite topics of our ancestors, in such
papers as the _Spectator_ and the _Rambler_. Addison, in his _Cato_,
described the simple Numidian, whose standard appears to have resembled
that of Scott's Highlander. The Numidian, he says, rests his head upon a
rock at night, and, if next day he chances to find a new repast or an
untasted spring, "blesses his stars and calls it luxury". General
Oglethorpe quoted this passage, in an argument about luxury, to Johnson,
and added, "let us have _that_ kind of luxury, sir, if you will".
Johnson himself put down all this declamation as part of the cant from
which we ought to clear our minds. No nation, he said to Goldsmith, was
ever hurt by luxury. "Let us take a walk from Charing Cross to
Whitechapel, through the greatest series of shops in the world: what is
there in any of these shops (if you except gin-shops) that can do any
human being any harm?" "I accept your challenge," said Goldsmith. "The
next shop to Northumberland House is a pickle-shop." To which the
excellent Johnson replied, first, that five pickle-shops could serve
the whole kingdom; secondly, that no harm was done to anybody either by
making pickles or by eating pickles. I will not go into the ethics of
pickles. I only quote this to remind you that this was one of the stock
questions of the period; and not without reason. The denunciation of
luxury was, in fact, the mark of a very significant tendency. Goldsmith
had expressed the prevalent sentiment in the _Deserted Village_, as in
the familiar passage beginning:--
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
And Goldsmith, like many contemporaries, was only versifying the
sentiments uttered most powerfully by Rousseau in his famous exaltation
of the ideal man of nature above the man of a corrupt civilisation. The
theory has some affinity to the ancient doctrine already expounded by
classical writers, according to which each form of government includes a
principle of decay as well as of life. One stage in the process of
corruption of Plato's ideal republic is marked by the appearance of the
drones, people who take a surfeit of unnecessary pleasures, and, to
obtain satisfaction, associate themselves with the fierce and rapacious.
In Rousseau's time, this view became connected with the growing belief
in progress and "perfectibility". It was a symptom of warning to the
drones of his day. It showed that the thoughtful classes were becoming
dimly sensible that something was wrong in the social organisation; and
that a selfish and indolent aristocracy should be called upon to put its
house in order. The denunciation of luxury meant, in short, that the
rich and powerful were accused of indulgence in pleasures which they had
not earned by services, but by the rigid enforcement of class
privileges. Considered from this point of view, as the muttering of a
coming storm, as the expression of a vague foreboding that the world was
somehow out of joint, we may see more meaning than appears at first
sight, in the old-fashioned commonplaces of our great-grandfathers. The
language has changed its form; but the discontent at the misuse of
wealth in various forms has certainly not diminished since that time.
Obviously, then, the question of luxury is connected with very wide and
deep problems as to what is the proper use of wealth, and might lead us
into ultimate questions as to the justification of the right to private
property at all. I shall try, however, to keep as closely as may be to
the particular aspect of such problems, which is immediately relevant to
this particular question. And for this purpose, I think it will be
convenient to take two points separately. The objections to luxury may
be stated either with reference to the individual or with reference to
the society. That is to say, that if we consider a man by himself, we
may ask with Johnson, whether expenditure upon pickles is injurious to
the constitution, or at what point it becomes injurious. And, in the
next place, we may ask whether, if we see our way to decide that pickles
are wholesome as well as agreeable, some of us may not be getting more
than our fair share of pickles, and so diminishing the total sum of
pleasure, by inordinate consumption. First, then, I discard, for the
moment, all social considerations. I take for granted, for the sake of
argument, that my indulgence does no harm to any one else; that I am not
depriving others of a means of enjoyment, but simply adding to my own;
or, at any rate, that I am not, for the moment, to take into account
that set of consequences. How far, on this hypothesis, or, say, setting
aside all question of duty to my neighbour, should I be prudent in
accumulating wealth? I sometimes amuse myself with the problem, How rich
should I like to be, supposing that I were perfectly wise in that sense
in which wisdom is compatible with thorough-going egoism, or with what
is called enlightened self-interest? The obvious answer is that, in that
case, there would be no limits to my desires. An imaginative American,
we are told, defined competence as "a million a minute and all your
expenses paid". The suggestion is fascinating, but not, to my mind,
quite satisfactory. It recalls a doctrine which used to be put forward
by the old political economists. They had to meet the theory--a
preposterous theory enough--of the danger of a universal glut; the
danger, that is, that a nation might produce so much that nothing would
have any value, and, therefore, that we should all be ruined by all
becoming enormously rich. To meet this, it was often urged--along with
more satisfactory arguments--that human desires were illimitable; and,
therefore, that however rich a man might become he would always wish to
become a little richer.
According to this doctrine, the desire for wealth cannot be satiated.
The millionaire would still choose an extra half-crown rather than
refuse it, although the half-crown brings him incomparably less
additional pleasure than it brought him when his pockets were empty. But
it is also true that long before we were millionaires, the pleasure
obtainable by additional wealth may be infinitesimal, or absolutely
non-existent. The simple desires may be easily saturated. Pope asks,
"What riches give us, let us then inquire". And he replies, "Meat, fire,
and clothes--what more? Meat, clothes, and fire." This is, in fact, a
pithy summary of our most elementary and necessary wants. Now, our
demand for meat is obviously strictly limited. As soon as we have eaten,
say, a pound of beefsteak, we do not want more; by the time we have
eaten, say, three pounds we do not only not want more, we loathe the
very thought of eating. So, when we are clothed sufficiently for comfort
and decency, more clothing is simply a burden; and we wish only for so
much fire as will keep our thermometer within certain limits; a heat
above or below would mean death either by burning or by freezing. Our
ultimate aim, therefore, in regard to desires of this class, is not to
increase the stimulus indefinitely, but to preserve a certain balance or
equilibrium. If we want more food after our appetites are satisfied, it
must either be with a view to our future consumption, which is still
strictly finite, or else with a view to exchanging the food for
something else, in which case it is desired, not as food, but as the
means of satisfying some other desire. If, then, Pope's doctrine were
really sound, which actually amounts to saying, if our desires were
really limited to the physical conditions necessary to life, we should
very soon reach the state in which they would be completely glutted or
saturated. It may be worth while to note the circumstance which rather
obscures our recognition of this fact. We may distinguish between the
wealth which a man actually uses and that which remains, as I may say,
only potential. A man may desire an indefinite quantity of wealth,
because he may wish to have rights which he may yet never turn to actual
account. There is a certain satisfaction, no doubt, in knowing that I
have a vast balance at my banker's, though I have no desire to use it. I
may want it some time or other; and, even if I never want it, I may
enjoy the sense of having a disproportionate barrier of money-bags piled
up between me and the yawning gulf of actual poverty. Therefore, though
a very limited amount may be enough to satiate all our existing desires,
we may like to know that there is more at our disposal. If possession
carried with it the necessity of using our property, if we could not
have potential as distinguished from actual wealth, we should be so far
from desiring an indefinite increase of wealth that we should regard the
increase beyond a certain limit as only one of two intolerable
alternatives.
The question, therefore, How rich should I wish to be? requires an
answer to the previous question, How rich can I be? A man, even if on
the intellectual level of a savage, can be indefinitely rich in
potential wealth: he may, that is, have a right to millions of pounds or
be the owner of thousands of acres; but in order to use them he must
have certain capacities and sensibilities. It is a curious question,
for example, how much of the wealth of a country would cease to be
wealth at all if the intelligence of the possessors were lowered certain
degrees in the scale? A large part of the wealth of England consists, I
suppose, of machinery. If nobody knew more of machines than I do--and my
whole notion of a machine is that it is something that goes round
somehow if you happen to turn the right handle--all this wealth would
become as useless as an electric telegraph in the possession of a hairy
Ainu. And if nobody had any better artistic perception than mine, and we
were therefore unable to see the difference between a Raphael and the
daub in an advertising placard, the pictures in the National Gallery
would have an average value, say, of eighteen-pence. A man, therefore,
who is at the lower levels of intelligence is simply unable to be
actually rich, beyond a narrow limit. The fact is occasionally forced
upon us by striking examples. I heard the other day a story--I am afraid
we all hear such stories too often--of a man who had become enormously
rich by a freak of fortune. His only idea of enjoyment happened to be
gin. He could, therefore, only use his wealth by drinking himself to
death; a proceeding which he accordingly felt to be only a proper
tribute to his improved social position. A similar result happens
whenever a sudden rise of wages to an insufficiently civilised class
leads to the enrichment of publicans, instead of increased indulgence in
refined and innocent pleasures. The man, in short, whose idea of
pleasure is simply the gratification of the physical appetites in their
coarser forms is incapable of becoming actually rich, because a small
amount of wealth will enable him to saturate his desires by providing a
superfluity of the material means of gratification. It is, perhaps, here
that we may take into account the remark so often made by moralists, by
Adam Smith among others, as Professor Sidgwick reminds us, that
happiness is more evenly distributed among different classes than we
suppose. The king, according to Shakespeare, cannot--
With all the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world ...
Sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
Who with a body filled and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.
The "body filled" and the "vacant mind" make up for the "distressful
bread". It is as well, that is, to have no wants except the want of mere
physical comfort, as to have higher wants and the means of gratifying
them, and yet to be saddled with the anxieties and responsibilities
which the higher position involves. The doctrine, "I am not really
better off than you," is, indeed, not a very graceful one from those
who are actually better off. There was some excuse for the fox who said
the grapes were sour when he could not get them; it argued a judicious
desire to make the best of things: but if he made the remark while he
was comfortably chewing them, by way of pacifying the grapeless foxes,
we should have thought him a more objectionable hypocrite. The pauper
may fairly reply, "If you really mean that your wealth brings no
happiness, why don't you change places with me?" I will, therefore, not
defend the statement, considered as an exhortation to content; but I
accept it as a recognition of the obvious fact, that if happiness means
a satisfaction of all our desires, a man of small means may be as happy
as the man of the greatest means, if his desires are limited in
proportion. But is it for our happiness to increase them?