private good. And on the other hand, nothing can be done to the
criminal which is for his own lasting good that will not also
profoundly react for the good of society, assuring its security, and
deterring others from a like career of crime. The very first claim
which the criminal has upon the services of his fellow-men is that
they stop him in his headlong course of wickedness. Arrest,
whether by the agents of the law or in some other way, is the first
step. The most spiritual concern for a degraded and demoralized
fellow-being does not exclude the sharp intervention implied in
arrest, for the spiritual attitude is not mawkish or incompatible
with the infliction of pain.

This, I think, will be readily granted. But the second step, a step
far more important than the arrest of the evildoer in order to arrest
the evildoing, is more likely to be contested and misunderstood.
The second step consists in fixing the mark of shame upon the
offender and publicly humiliating him by means of the solemn
sentence of the judge. It may be asked, What human being is fit to
exercise this awful office of acting as judge of another? Remember
the words of Shakespeare in King Lear: ". . . .See how yond
justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change
places; and . . . . which is the justice, which the thief?" Or recall
what the Puritan preacher said when he saw from his window a
culprit being led to the gallows: "There, but for the grace of God,
go I." In other words, had I been born as this man was, had I been
played upon by the influences to which he was subject, had I been
tempted as he was, how dare I say that I should not have fallen as
he did? Had it not been for some grace extended to me through no
desert of mine, I might be traveling the road on which he travels
now.

Furthermore, can we say that the sentence of the judge is
proportioned to the heinousness of the deed? Is the murderer who
in a fit of uncontrolled passion has taken a human life--it may have
been his first and only crime--necessarily more depraved than the
thief; or is the thief in jail who has indeed broken the law,
necessarily more depraved than numbers of others who have
dexterously circumvented the law, violating the spirit though
keeping within the letter of it? Is even the abject creature who
strikes his wife more abandoned than a man of the type of
Grandcourt in _Daniel Deronda_, whose insults are dealt with a
marble politeness, and who crush