compelled me to take other people's
things, you would realize that this importance is very diagrammatic,"
the judge would answer: "That's all right for the justice of the future,
but it isn't now. You are number 404 of the criminal code, and after
leaving this court room with this number pasted legally on your back,
you will receive another number, for you will enter prison as number 404
and will exchange it for entry number 1525, or some other, because your
personality as a man disappears entirely before the enactment of social
justice!" And then it is pretended that this man, whose personality is
thus absurdly ignored, should leave prison cured of all degeneration,
and if he falls back into the path of thorns of his misery and commits
another crime, the judge simply pastes another article over the other,
by adding number 80 or 81, which refer to cases of relapse, to number
404!

In this way the classic school of criminology came to its unit of
punishment, which it heralded as its great progress. In the Middle
Ages, the diversity of punishment was greater. But in the 19th century
the classic school of criminology combatted dishonoring punishment,
corporeal punishment, confiscation, professional punishment, capital
punishment, with its ideal of one sole penalty, the only panacea for
crime and criminals, _prison_.

We have, indeed, prohibitory measures and fines even today. But in
substance the whole punitive armory is reduced to imprisonment, since
fines are likewise convertible into so many days or months of
imprisonment. Solitary confinement is the ideal of the classic school of
criminology. But experience proves that this penalty has as much effect
on the disease of criminality, as the remedy of a physician would have,
who would sit in the door of a hospital and tell every patient seeking
relief: "Whatever may be your disease, I have only one medicine and that
is a decoction of rhubarb. You have heart trouble? Well, then, the
problem for me is simply--how big a dose of rhubarb decoction shall I
give you?"

And measuring doses of penalty is the foundation of the criminal code.
That is so true that this code is in its last analysis but a table of
criminal logarithms for figuring out penalties. Woe to the judge who
makes a mistake in sentencing a 19 year old offender who was drunk when
he sinned, but had premeditated his deed. Woe to the judge, if he misses
his calculation in adding or subtracting the third, or sixth