The reason in mind more easily reconciles itself to this supposition is that we conceive existence to be less a blessing than a curse to a being incorrigibly vicious. But, in that case, the supposition does not fall within the terms of the question: I am in reality conferring a benefit.
It has been asked, 'If we conceive to ourselves two beings, each of them solitary, but the first virtuous, and the second vicious, the first inclined to be the highest acts of benevolence, if his situation were changed for the social the second to malignity, tyranny and injustice, do we not eel that the first is entitled to felicity in preference to the second? If there be any difference in the question, it is wholly caused by the extravagance of the supposition. No being can be either virtuous, or vicious, who has no opportunity of influencing the happiness of others. He may indeed, though now solitary, recollect or imagine a social state; but this sentiment, and the propensities it generates can scarcely be vigorous, unless he have hopes of being at some future time, restored to that state. The true solitaire cannot be considered as a moral being unless the morality we contemplate be that which has relation to his own permanent advantage. But, if that be our meaning punishment, unless for reform, is peculiarly absurd. His conduct vicious, because it has a tendency to render him miserable: shall we inflict calamity upon him, for this reason only, because he has already inflicted calamity upon himself? It is difficult for us to imagine to ourselves a solitary intellectual being, whom no future accident shall ever render social. It is difficult for us to separate, even an idea, virtue and vice from happiness and misery, and, of consequence, not to imagine that, when we bestow a benefit upon virtue, we bestow it where it will turn to account;Chapter nd when we bestow a benefit upon vice, we bestow it where it will be unproductive.
For these reasons, e question of desert, as it relates to a solitary being, will always have a tendency to mislead and perplex.
It has sometimes been alleged that the course of nature has annexed suffering to vice, and has thus led us to the idea of punishment here referred to. Arguments of this sort should be listened to with great caution. It was by reasonings of a similar nature that our ancestors justified the practice of religious persecution: 'Heretics and unbelievers are the objects of God's indignation; it must therefore be meritorious in us to maltreat those whom God has cursed.' We know too little of the system of the universe are too liable to error respecting it, and see too small a portion, to entitle us to form our moral principles upon an imitation of what we conceive to be the course of nature.
Thus it appears, whether we enter philosophically into the principle of human actions, or merely analyse their ideas of rectitude and justice which have the universal consent of mankind, that, in the refined and absolute sense in which that term has frequently been employed, there is no such thing as desert; in other words, that it cannot be just that we should inflict suffering on any man, except far as it tends to good. Hence it follows also that punishment, in the last of the senses enumerated towards the beginning of this chapter, by no means accords with any sound principles of reasoning. It is right that I should inflict suffering, in every case where it can be clearly shown that such infliction will produce an overbalance of good. But this infliction bears no reference to the mere innocence or guilt of the person upon whom it is made. An innocent man is the proper subject of it, if it tend to good. A guilty man is the proper subject of it under no other point of view. To punish him, upon any hypothesis, for what is past and irrecoverable, and for the consideration of that only, must be ranked among the most pernicious exhibitions of an untutored barbarism.
Every man upon whom discipline is employed is to be considered as to the purpose of this discipline as innocent. The only sense of the word punishment that can be supposed to be compatible with the principles of the present work is that of pain inflicted on a person convicted of past injurious action, for the purpose of preventing future mischief.
It is of the utmost importance that we should bear these ideas constantly in mind, during our examination of the theory of punishment. This theory would, in the past transactions of mankind, have been totally different if they had divested themselves of the emotions of anger and resentment;Chapter f they had considered the man who torments another for what he has done as upon a par with the child who beats the table; if they had conjured up to their imagination, and properly estimated, the man who should shut up in prison and periodically torture some atrocious criminal, from the mere consideration of the abstract congruity of crime and punishment, without a possible benefit to others or to himself; if they had regarded punishment as that which was to be regulated solely, by a dispassionate calculation of the future, without suffering the past, on its own account, for a moment to enter into the proceeding.