es his wife's sensibilities, not with
a vulgar blow but with the cold and calculating cruelty of a cynic?
When it comes to passing moral judgments and fixing blame, and
especially to measuring the degree of another's guilt, who of us is
good enough, who of us is pure enough, who of us is himself free
enough from wrong to exercise so terrible an office? Is not Lear
right, after all: ". . . .change places; and. . . .which is the justice,
which is the thief?"

It may be said in reply to these objections: First, that the judge
does not speak in his private capacity, but that he delivers the
judgment of mankind on the doer and the deed, serving as the
mouthpiece of the moral law, so far as it is incorporated in the
human law. We should select the highest characters available for
so exalted a duty, but freedom from even great human infirmity we
cannot expect to find. Again, it is not the judge's business to fix the
degree of moral guilt; that not even the best and wisest of men can
do. The inscrutable fact of the degree of moral guilt eludes all
human insight. Only omniscience could decide who is more guilty
relatively to opportunities, advantages, circumstances; who has
made the braver effort to escape wrongdoing; whether the admired
preacher, or the culprit on his way to the gallows; whether the
President in the White House or the wretch behind the bars. The
office of the judge is to pronounce that crime has been committed,
irrespective of the subtle question of the degree of guilt. Murder
has been done, property has been stolen, the sin and the sinner
wedded together. The office of the judge is to declare the fact of
that infelicitous union, and to pronounce the penalty according to
the law. And this, in particular. The object of the punishment
which the law pronounces is not vindictive chastisement of the
culprit. The object of punishment is purely reformatory. Only it
must not be forgotten that there can be no reformation without
penitence, and no penitence without self-abasement. And this
consists in confessing one's self guilty, admitting that the guilt has
become a part of one's being, and humbling one's pride to the
ground. The public sentence pronounced by the judge, the shame
which he fixes upon the culprit, has, then, for its object to pave the
way toward reformation, to break down the defenses which the
sophistry of wickedness sets up, to compel the man to see himself
as others see him, to force him to realize