g to men
strong motives, to weigh in the scale against the temptation of an
immediate personal gratification. Holbach does not make it quite
distinct that the object of penal legislation is in some cases to give
the offender, as well as other people, a strong reason for thinking
twice before he repeats the offence; yet in other cases, where the
punishment is capital, the legislation does not aim at influencing the
mind of the offender at all, but the minds of other people only. This is
only a side illustration of a common weakness in most arguments on this
subject. A thorough vindication of the penal laws, on the principles of
a systematic fatalism, can only be successful, if we think less of the
wrongdoer in any given case, than of affecting general motives, and
building up a right habit of avoiding or accepting certain classes of
action.

The writer then justly connects his scientific necessarianism in
philosophy with humanity in punishment. He protests against excessive
cruelty in the infliction of legal penalties, and especially against the
use of torture, on two grounds; first, that experience demonstrates the
uselessness of these superfluous rigours; and, second, that the habit of
witnessing atrocious punishments familiarises both criminals and others
with the idea of cruelty. The acquiescence of Paris for a few months in
the cruelties of the Terror was no doubt due, on Holbach's perfectly
sound principle, to the far worse cruelties with which the laws had
daily made Paris familiar down to the last years of the monarchy. And
Holbach was justified in expecting a greater degree of charitable and
considerate judgment from the establishment in men's minds of a
Necessarian theory. We are no longer vindictive against the individual
doer; we wax energetic against the defective training and the
institutions which allowed wrong motives to weigh more heavily with him
than right ones. Punishment on the theory of necessity ought always to
go with prevention, and is valued just because it is a force on
prevention, and not merely an element in retribution.

Holbach answers effectively enough the common objection that his
fatalism would plunge men's souls into apathy. If all is necessary, why
shall I not let things go, and myself remain quiet? As if we _could_
stay our hands from action, if our feelings were trained to proper
sensibility and sympathy. As if it were possible for a man of tender
disposition not to interest himse