Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/470

 456 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

None can gainsay Plato's definition that, "he is good whose

soul is good The virtuous principle is intellectual not

emotional or voluntary It is knowledge that determines

the will." If to this we add Aristotle's criterion of virtue, that, "virtue is a habit accompanied with deliberate preference in the relative mean defined by reason as a prudent man defines," we may accept Lord Bacon's declaration that, "there is no man doeth wrong for the wrong's sake but to purchase for himself a pleasure or profit." In the depths of human action thus fathomed there seems to disappear any trace of intrinsic unrelated morality of conduct.

It is, therefore, a principle of the newer penology that the state shall not judge the heart's intentions, and not judging or knowing, shall not designedly trespass upon the mystical field of the soul's moral relations; but, instead, shall remain devoted to the rational regulation of the prisoner's conduct with sole regard to the public security.

THE PURPOSE OF JUSTICE

Having thus relinquished pursuit of mystic morality because it is deemed impossible correctly to estimate intrinsic moral quality, the pursuit of administrative justice is, for a similar reason, also withdrawn. Justice Fry, who firmly held to the doctrine of just punishment for crimes, admitted that the doctrine takes root "in the endeavor to find a fitness of pain to sin which the world does not satisfactorily supply," and, in his dilemma, advocated that always the greatest conceivable injury of the various crimes should govern the amount of penalty. He would strike offenders hard enough to compensate the greatest possible evil and, so, fully recompense the lesser wrong. This is a vain random reach for justice disregard ful of involved severity. Doubtless through all sentient being there exists an instinctive sense named or misnamed justice ; but it has a movable interpre- tation according to the man and the circumstances : it is a chimera in whose name unfair may appear as fair and wrong take on the guise of right. "Divine equity gives to the greater more and to the inferior less (supposedly) in proportion to the nature of