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Page 36
"Then you don't believe in the punishment of crime?" said Henry.
"Most emphatically I do," replied the doctor; "only I don't believe in
calling it justice or ascribing it a moral significance. The punishment
of criminals is a matter of public policy and expediency, precisely like
measures for the suppression of nuisances or the prevention of epidemics.
It is needful to restrain those who by crime have revealed their
likelihood to commit further crimes, and to furnish by their punishment a
motive to deter others from crime."
"And to deter the criminal himself after his release," added Henry.
"I included him in the word 'others,'" said the doctor. "The man who is
punished is other from the man who did the act, and after punishment he
is still other."
"Really, doctor," observed Henry, "I don't see that a man who fully
believes your theory is in any need of your process for obliterating his
sins. He won't think of blaming himself for them any way."
"True," said the doctor, "perfectly true. My process is for those who
cannot attain to my philosophy. I break for the weak the chain of memory
which holds them to the past; but stronger souls are independent of me.
They can unloose the iron links and free themselves. Would that more had
the needful wisdom and strength thus serenely to put their past behind
them, leaving the dead to bury their dead, and go blithely forward,
taking each new day as a life by itself, and reckoning themselves daily
new-born, even as verily they are! Physically, mentally, indeed, the
present must be for ever the outgrowth of the past, conform to its
conditions, bear its burdens; but moral responsibility for the past the
present has none, and by the very definition of the words can have none.
There is no need to tell people that they ought to regret and grieve over
the errors of the past. They can't help doing that. I myself suffer at
times pretty sharply from twinges of the rheumatism which I owe to
youthful dissipation. It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old
fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the wild student did,
but, all the same, I confoundedly wish he hadn't.
"Ah, me!" continued the doctor. "Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in
the present world without having moralists teach us that it is our duty
to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of
memory, as if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the sins of our
past selves than of our fathers' sins. How many a man and woman have
poisoned their lives with tears for some one sin far away in the past!
Their folly is greater, because sadder, but otherwise just like that of
one who should devote his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecile
self-complacency over the recollection of a good act he had once done.
The consequences of the good and the bad deeds our fathers and we have
done fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now scorching, of
rewards and of penalties alike undeserved by our present selves. But,
while we bear them with such equanimity as we may, let us remember that
as it is only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues, so it
is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past
faults."
Henry's quick ear caught a rustle in the retiring-room. He stepped to the
door and looked in. Madeline was sitting up.
CHAPTER XII.
Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on the floor, her left hand
rested on the sofa by her side, her right was raised to one temple and
checked in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of hair which had
been disarranged in sleep. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted, and she
was staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her faculties appear to be
in the effort of reflection that she did not notice Henry's entrance
until, standing by her aide, he asked, in a voice which he vainly tried
to steady--
"How do you feel ?"
She did not look up at him at all, but replied, in the dreamy, drawling
tone of one in a brown study--
"I--feel--well. I'm--ever--so--rested."
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