Just so much.
You see, to him mercy is a falling short of what is necessary, a leaving
of work half done, as if you were to leave a garment half washed. Excess
of punishment is mere useless brutality. He recognizes no vicarious
punishment. He cannot understand that A. should be damned in order to
save B. This does not agree with his scheme of righteousness at all. It
seems as futile to him as the action of washing one garment twice that
another might be clean. Each man should atone for his own sin, _must_
atone for his own sin, in order to be freed from it. No one can help
him, or suffer for him. If I have a sore throat, it would be useless to
blister you for it: that is his idea.

Consider this Burman. He had committed theft. That he admitted. He was
prepared to atone for it. The magistrate was not content with that, but
made him also atone for other men's sins. He was twice punished, because
other men who escaped did ill. That was the first thing he could not
understand. And then, when he had atoned both for his own sin and for
that of others, when he came out of prison, he was looked upon as in a
worse state than if he had never atoned at all. If he had never been in
prison, his master would have forgiven his theft and taken him back, but
now he would not. The boy was proud of having atoned in full, very full,
measure for his sin; the master looked upon the punishment as
inconceivably worse than the crime.

So the officer went about and told the story of his boy coming back, and
expecting to be taken on again, as a curious instance of the mysterious
working of the Oriental mind, as another example of the extraordinary
way Easterns argue. 'Just to think,' said the officer, 'he was not
ashamed of having been in prison!' And the boy? Well, he probably said
nothing, but went away and did not understand, and kept the matter to
himself, for they are very dumb, these people, very long-suffering,
very charitable. You may be sure that he never railed at the law, or
condemned his old master for harshness.

He would wonder why he was punished because other people had sinned and
escaped. He could not understand that. It would not occur to him that
sending him to herd with other criminals, that cutting him off from all
the gentle influences of life, from the green trees and the winds of
heaven, from the society of women, from the example of noble men, from
the teachings of religion, was a curious way to render him a better man.