Self-punishment

“ Again, the system of physical punishment invariably leads to defiance; it stirs up a spirit of contradiction and sullenness [99] which gradually encrusts the young mind with the deplorable proof-armor of ultimate indifference. We need give but one example—a personal one—of the immense superiority of moral over physical punishment. As a child, we were stubborn and self-willed, and were frequently treated, not exactly to corporal indignities, but to threadbare schoolroom devices for overcoming temper. ”

“ Punishments can only be salutary as a means of moral discipline in the measure in which they produce shame and mortification. But one who has no self-respect can have no shame. The effect of punishment in such a case is lost only so far as it may help to brutalize him. ”

“ The principle that punishment should be a means of awaking in the offender the consciousness of a self which can and should hold itself to account despite the magnitude of its temptations is of special usefulness, in the years when a broadening altruism (and we might add, a tendency to self-pity) is likely to lead to loose notions of personal obligation. ”

“ Punishment is the denial of wrong by the assertion of right, and the wrong exists in the self, or will, of the criminal; his self is a wrongful self, and is realized in his person and possessions; he has asserted in them his wrongful will, the incarnate denial of right ”

“ In its own interests society should, in our view, be slow to authorise a form of punishment which may degrade the brutal man still further and may deprive the less hardened man of the last traces of self-respect ... ”

“ But if the act had no necessary foundation in his character, if it was merely an accident that his will chose thus, then, since the act is past and there is no reason for drawing conclusions from it with regard to future action, how does it concern him?
Blame and punishment, as well as self-blame, have regard to character and so to the future. Acts are not blameworthy and punishable if they have no cause. Punishment is inflicted from two motives: as a preventive, and as an expression of the felt need of retribution. ”

“ It admits that punishment is reformatory, while many advocates of punishing to reform at bottom disbelieve that punishment, i.e. pain, exerts a reforming influence. Pain, bodily or mental, and even the dread of it, keep the lower self under, and thus punishment on its reformatory side is an artificial creation of conditions favorable to moral improvement. ”

“ Sometimes, however, in trivial matters the immediate punishment of an injury is allowed to private persons, in order to prevent a recurrence of the injustice, or under circumstances in which such an action is really an act of self-defence. ”

“ I tell you a man can't remain repentant too long under the stern and chilling eyes of retribution. If you are g [Pg 378] oing to treat me as though I were physically unfit to touch, I can make no further protest. But, Jacqueline, no man was ever aided by a punishment that wounds his self-respect. ”

“ The woes that are reserved for me are incapable alike of alleviation or intermission.
But I came not hither to recriminate. I came not hither to accuse others, but myself. I know the retribution that is appointed for guilt like mine. It is just. I may shudder at the foresight of my punishment and shrink in the endurance of it; but I shall be indebted for part of my torment to the vigour of my understanding, which teaches me that my punishment is just. Why should I procrastinate my doom and strive to render my burden more light? ”

“ for vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment. ”

“ What has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man's animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards God. Every Nay man utters to his nature, to his real being, he flings out as a Yea, an affirmation of reality applied to God's sanctity, his capacity of judge and executioner, and in the next place to eternity, the "Beyond," pain without end, eternal punishment in hell. ”

“ It is not the idea of pain that makes me abhor bodily punishment, but the deep humilation that the victim must feel. And also the harm it does to the one who punishes. Physical punishment embitters, but never cures. ”

“ Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. ”

“ On the contrary, we call every pain or suffering inflicted on an agent for committing a bad action, for no other reason than that it is bad, chastisement or punishment.
Punishment stands against damage or wrong; that is to say, against undeserved harm. The blows of fortune or of men are not always punishments. One may be struck without being punished. ”

“ You cannot correct moral infirmity by confining the victim of it among criminals, for no greater punishment can be inflicted on the feelings of man; and punishment destroys rather than encourages the latent susceptibility of our better nature. ”

“ Although affecting the individual, and in many of its phases with brutal and reckless disregard for human suffering, it can hardly be styled a purely personal punishment, as will be shown from a closer examination of the various methods of corporeal punishment. ”

“ But is the motive of punishment for retribution worthy of a moral person? If the proper aim of punishment were retributive, the returning of evil for evil in proportionate measure, how could the amount of punishment be determined in case of such offenses as perjury, deception, or treason? ”

“ It he commits what is called crime, and remorse succeeds, and punishment is inflicted under law, the crime is good, the remorse is good, the punishment is good, all necessary and good, and working out, as he hopes, a result of pure happiness. ”

“ I replied that, in my mind, it was no punishment at all; and I am yet to learn what punishment can dismay a man conscious of his own innocence. Lightning, tempest and battle, wreck, pain, buffeting and torture have small terror to a pure conscience. ”

“ A child’s simple philosophy of punishment therefore is after all the correct one, when it tells you without hesitation that the reason a man is punished for a bad action is simply ‘because he deserves it.’ The notion of desert in punishment is based entirely on feelings of the justice of resentment. ”

“ This is only an imitation of nature, in which pain is a sanction and a deterrent. Family and school discipline have always rested on this artificial use of pain. It is, apparently, the 221most primary application of force or coercion. It combines directly with vengeance, which is a primary passion of human nature. Punishment is of this philosophy, for by punishment we furnish, or add, a painful consequence to acts which we desire to restrain, in the hope that the consequence will cause reflection and make the victim desist. ”

“ In many cases of this kind they deserve punishment and should be punished. But, for God's sake, let the punishment be consistent with justice and mercy. If ten years is not sufficient punishment to make man control himself in future, why not be merciful and kill him at once? For as we hope for mercy, so must we show it to others. All other crimes should be dealt with accordingly. Give a man a chance to reclaim himself. Should he return to a life of crime in preference to an honest one, the law has its remedy and can act accordingly. ”

“ Admitting as I thus do that there is much of selfishness in our nature, yet persuaded that there is also much of sympathy and mercy in it, taking either the character of God, or that of man as a criterion, I have long regarded the belief of eternal punishment as one of those moral paradoxes which you cannot deny, and for which you cannot account. ”

“ In proportion as punishments become more cruel, the minds of men, as a fluid rises to the same height with that which surrounds it, grow hardened and insensible; and the force of the passions still continuing, in the space of an hundred years, the wheel terrifies no more than formerly the prison. That a punishment may produce the effect required, it is sufficient that the evil it occasions should exceed the good expected from the crime ”

“ But it is forgotten that if the person punished is supposed to be innocent, or even if there be any doubt of his guilt, the spectator will reflect that his own danger, whatever it may be, is not contingent on his guiltiness, but threatens him equally if he remains innocent, and how, therefore, is he deterred from guilt by the apprehension of such punishment? ”

“ Studying the object of his pity, he said slowly, "I suppose the most of us are as deserving of punishment as the majority of those who actually get it. One way or another, we are all trying to escape the penalty for our wrong-doing. What if I should help you out--make it possible for you to live like other men who are safe from the law? ”

“ If there is any opinion to which the man of uncultivated morals is attached, it is the belief in the necessary connection of punishment and guilt. Punishment is punishment, only where it is deserved. We pay the penalty, because we owe it, and for no other reason; and if punishment is inflicted for any other reason whatever, than because it is merited by wrong, it is a gross immorality, a crying injustice, an abominable crime, and not what it pretends to be. ”

“ From the simple consideration of the truths hitherto demonstrated it is evident that the object of punishment is neither to torment and inflict a sensitive creature nor to undo a crime already committed. Can he, whose function it is, so far from acting from passion, to tranquillise the private passions of his fellows, harbour in the body politic such useless cruelty, the instrument either of furious fanatics or of weak tyrants? ”

“ I suffer because the punishment which, by my crimes, I have brought down upon myself, is greater than I can bear; I suffer, too, because the last purpose I had left to live for, which was also a criminal purpose, has been defeated. ”

“ The temptation to think that punishment is just and right has been with us from time immemorial; it is probably arboreal, certainly neolithic; and therefore, to our atavistic instincts, it is supremely sacred. We have got it firmly into our heads that punishment is a superior ordering of consequences. And as the law of cause and effect which we see operating in nature is the basis of our moral [Pg 29] sense, we have fallen to the confused notion that punishment is the same. ”

“ This makes it all the more permissible to eliminate one supposed utility, which passes, at any rate in the popular mind, for its most essential utility, and which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper instrumentum of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a "bad conscience," "remorse." ”

“ When the specified conditions of just punishment are fulfilled, the person punished himself recognises it as just, as his due or desert, and it is so recognised by the onlooker who thinks himself into the situation. ”

“ To punish, appears to it to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and "the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate conclusion. ”

“ To every crime, which from its nature must frequently remain unpunished, the punishment is an incentive. Such is the nature of the human mind, that difficulties, if not insurmountable, nor too great for our natural indolence, embellish the object, and spur us on to the pursuit. ”

“ But if punishment that is human, and hath its bounds, would have triumphed over all anger, much more would the punishment to come, if it had continual possession of our thoughts, expel from the soul not only resentment, but every evil imagination? For what is easier, I ask, than to get rid of resentment against the injurer? ”

“ Now, no one who is visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil. Accordingly, if they were but willing to weigh their own case, could they think themselves free from punishment whom wickedness, worst of all evils, has not only touched, but deeply tainted? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Punishment coming in this way, and administered in this spirit, will irritate the mind and injure the temper comparatively little; and, instead of being less; will be much more effective in accomplishing the right kind of cure for the fault, than any stern, severe, and vindictive retribution can possibly be. ”

“ If an injury to oneself is merely personal, one should be willing to forego punishment of the guilty person, and should actually do so when this course is expedient, as Our Lord teaches in Matthew, vi. ”

“ Society is asked, then, to denude itself of an instrument of punishment which, in the grave cases to which alone it is suitable, effects its purposes at a less cost of human suffering than any other; which, while it inspires more terror, is less cruel in actual fact than any punishment that we should think of substituting for it. ”

“ Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,—and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation ”