s had
another emotion and passed another law.

In the main, the controversy over capital punishment has been one
between emotional and unemotional people. Now and then the emotionalist
is reinforced by some who have a religious conviction against capital
punishment, based perhaps on the rather trite expression that "God gave
life and only God should take it away." Such a statement is plausible
but not capable of proof. In the main religious people believe in
capital punishment. The advocates of capital punishment dispose of the
question by saying that it is the "sentimentalist" or, rather, the
"maudlin sentimentalist" who is against it. Sentimentalist really
implies "maudlin."

But emotion too has its biological origin and is a subject of scientific
definition. A really "sentimental" person, in the sense used, is one who
has sympathy. This, in turn, comes from imagination which is probably
the result of a sensitive nervous system, one that quickly and easily
responds to stimuli. Those who have weak emotions do not respond so
readily to impressions. Their assumption of superior wisdom has its
basis only in a nervous system which is sluggish and phlegmatic to
stimuli. Such impressions as each system makes are registered on the
brain and become the material for recollection and comparison, which go
to form opinion. The correctness of the mental processes depends upon
the correctness of the senses that receive the impression, the nerves
that transmit the correctness of the registration, and the character of
the brain. It does not follow that the stoic has a better brain than the
despised "sentimentalist." Either one of them may have a good one, and
either one of them a poor one. Still, charity and kindliness probably
come from the sensitive system which imagines itself in the place of
the object that it pities. All pity is really pain engendered by the
feelings that translate one into the place of another. Both hate and
love are biologically necessary to life and its processes.

Many people urge that the penalty of imprisonment for life would be all
right if the culprit could be kept in prison during life, but in the
course of time he is pardoned. This to me is an excellent reason why his
life should be saved. It is proof that the feeling of hatred that
inspired judge and jury has spent itself and that they can look at the
murderer as a man. Which decision is the more righteous, the one where
hatred and fear affect the j