ed criminal.

The world has gone on fining, imprisoning, torturing and killing
the victims of condition and circumstance, and condition and
circumstance have gone on producing the same kind of men and women
year after year and century after century--and all this is so
completely within the control of cause and effect, within the scope
and jurisdiction of universal law, that we can prophesy the number
of criminals for the next year--the thieves and robbers and murderers
--with almost absolute certainty.

There are just so many mistakes committed every year--so many crimes
--so many heartless and foolish things done--and it does not seem
to be--at least by the present methods--possible to increase or
decrease the number.

We have thousands and thousands of pulpits, and thousands of
moralists, and countless talkers and advisers, but all these sermons,
and all the advice, and all the talk, seem utterly powerless in
the presence of cause and effect. Mothers may pray, wives may
weep, children may starve, but the great procession moves on.

For thousands of years the world endeavored to save itself from
disease by ceremonies, by genuflections, by prayers, by an appeal
to the charity and mercy of heaven--but the diseases flourished
and the graveyards became populous, and all the ceremonies and all
the prayers were without the slightest effect. We must at last
recognize the fact, that not only life, but conduct, has a physical
basis. We must at last recognize the fact that virtue and vice,
genius and stupidity, are born of certain conditions.

_Question_. In which way do you think the reformation or reconstruction
of the inebriate is to be effected--by punishment, by moral suasion,
by seclusion, or by medical treatment?

_Answer_. In the first place, punishment simply increases the
disease. The victim, without being able to give the reasons, feels
that punishment is unjust, and thus feeling, the effect of the
punishment cannot be good.

You might as well punish a man for having the consumption which he
inherited from his parents, or for having a contagious disease
which was given to him without his fault, as to punish him for
drunkenness. No one wishes to be unhappy--no one wishes to destroy
his own well-being. All persons prefer happiness to unhappiness,
and success to failure, Consequently, you might as well punish a
man for being unhappy, and thus increase his unhappiness, as to
punish him for drunkenness.