The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XI Part 15

Have we not advanced far enough intellectually to deny the existence of chance? Are we not satisfied now that back of every act and thought and dream and fancy is an efficient cause? Is anything, or can anything, be produced that is not necessarily produced? Can the fatherless and motherless exist? Is there not a connection between all events, and is not every act related to all other acts? Is it not possible, is it not probable, is it not true, that the actions of all men are determined by countless causes over which they have no positive control?

Certain it is that men do not prefer unhappiness to joy.

It can hardly be said that man intends permanently to injure himself, and that he does what he does in order that he may live a life of misery. On the other hand, we must take it for granted that man endeavors to better his own condition, and seeks, although by mistaken ways, his own well-being. The poorest man would like to be rich--the sick desire health--and no sane man wishes to win the contempt and hatred of his fellow-men. Every human being prefers liberty to imprisonment.

Are the brains of criminals exactly like the brains of honest men? Have criminals the same ambitions, the same standards of happiness or of well-being? If a difference exists in brain, will that in part account for the difference in character? Is there anything in heredity? Are vices as carefully transmitted by nature as virtues? Does each man in some degree bear burdens imposed by ancestors? We know that diseases of flesh and blood are transmitted--that the child is the heir of physical deformity. Are diseases of the brain--are deformities of the soul, of the mind, also transmitted?

We not only admit, but we a.s.sert, that in the physical world there are causes and effects. We insist that there is and can be no effect without an efficient cause. When anything happens in that world, we are satisfied that it was naturally and necessarily produced. The causes may be obscure, but we as implicitly believe in their existence as when we know positively what they are. In the physical world we have taken the ground that there is nothing miraculous--that everything is natural--and if we cannot explain it, we account for our inability to explain, by our own ignorance. Is it not possible, is it not probable, that what is true in the physical world is equally true in the realm of mind--in that strange world of pa.s.sion and desire? Is it possible that thoughts or desires or pa.s.sions are the children of chance, born of nothing? Can we conceive of nothing as a force, or as a cause? If, then, there is behind every thought and desire and pa.s.sion an efficient cause, we can, in part at least, account for the actions of men.

A certain man under certain conditions acts in a certain way. There are certain temptations that he, with his brain, with his experience, with his intelligence, with his surroundings cannot withstand. He is irresistibly led to do, or impelled to do, certain things; and there are other things that he can not do. If we change the conditions of this man, his actions will be changed. Develop his mind, give him new subjects of thought, and you change the man; and the man being Changed, it follows of necessity that his conduct will be different.

In civilized countries the struggle for existence is severe--the compet.i.tion far sharper than in savage lands. The consequence is that there are many failures. These failures lack, it may be, opportunity or brain or moral force or industry, or something without which, under the circ.u.mstances, success is impossible. Certain lines of conduct are called legal, and certain others criminal, and the men who fail in one line may be driven to the other. How do we know that it is possible for all people to be honest? Are we certain that all people can tell the truth? Is it possible for all men to be generous or candid or courageous?

I am perfectly satisfied that there are millions of people incapable of committing certain crimes, and it may be true that there are millions of others incapable of practicing certain virtues. We do not blame a man because he is not a sculptor, a poet, a painter, or a statesman. We say he has not the genius. Are we certain that it does not require genius to be good? Where is the man with intelligence enough to take into consideration the circ.u.mstances of each individual case? Who has the mental balance with which to weigh the forces of heredity, of want, of temptation,--and who can a.n.a.lyze with certainty the mysterious motions of the brain? Where and what are the sources of vice and virtue? In what obscure and shadowy recesses of the brain are pa.s.sions born? And what is it that for the moment destroys the sense of right and wrong?

Who knows to what extent reason becomes the prisoner of pa.s.sion--of some strange and wild desire, the seeds of which were sown, it may be, thousands of years ago in the breast of some savage? To what extent do antecedents and surroundings affect the moral sense?

Is it not possible that the tyranny of governments, the injustice of nations, the fierceness of what is called the law, produce in the individual a tendency in the same direction? Is it not true that the citizen is apt to imitate his nation? Society degrades its enemies--the individual seeks to degrade his. Society plunders its enemies, and now and then the citizen has the desire to plunder his. Society kills its enemies, and possibly sows in the heart of some citizen the seeds of murder.

III.

Is it not true that the criminal is a natural product, and that society unconsciously produces these children of vice? Can we not safely take another step, and say that the criminal is a victim, as the diseased and insane and deformed are victims? We do not think of punishing a man because he is afflicted with disease--our desire is to find a cure. We send him, not to the penitentiary, but to the hospital, to an asylum.

We do this because we recognize the fact that disease is naturally produced--that it is inherited from parents, or the result of unconscious negligence, or it may be of recklessness--but instead of punishing, we pity. If there are diseases of the mind, of the brain, as there are diseases of the body; and if these diseases of the mind, these deformities of the brain, produce, and necessarily produce, what we call vice, why should we punish the-criminal, and pity those who are physically diseased?

Socrates, in some respects at least one of the wisest of men, said: "It is strange that you should not be angry when you meet a man with an ill-conditioned body, and yet be vexed when you encounter one with an ill-conditioned soul."

We know that there are deformed bodies, and we are equally certain that there are deformed minds.

Of course, society has the right to protect itself, no matter whether the persons who attack its well-being are responsible or not, no matter whether they are sick in mind, or deformed in brain. The right of self-defence exists, not only in the individual, but in society. The great question is, How shall this right of self-defence be exercised?

What spirit shall be in the nation, or in society--the spirit of revenge, a desire to degrade and punish and destroy, or a spirit born of the recognition of the fact that criminals are victims?

The world has thoroughly tried confiscation, degradation, imprisonment, torture and death, and thus far the world has failed. In this connection I call your attention to the following statistics gathered in our own country:

In 1850, we had twenty-three millions of people, and between six and seven thousand prisoners.

In 1860--thirty-one millions of people, and nineteen thousand prisoners.

In 1870--thirty-eight millions of people, and thirty-two thousand prisoners.

In 1880--fifty millions of people, and fifty-eight thousand prisoners.

It may be curious to note the relation between insanity, pauperism and crime:

In 1850, there were fifteen thousand insane; in 1860, twenty-four thousand; in 1870, thirty-seven thousand; in 1880, ninety-one thousand.

In the light of these statistics, we are not succeeding in doing away with crime. There were in 1880, fifty-eight thousand prisoners, and in the same year fifty-seven thousand homeless children, and sixty-six thousand paupers in almshouses.

Is it possible that we must go to the same causes for these effects?

IV.

There is no reformation in degradation. To mutilate a criminal is to say to all the world that he is a criminal, and to render his reformation substantially impossible. Whoever is degraded by society becomes its enemy. The seeds of malice are sown in his heart, and to the day of his death he will hate the hand that sowed the seeds.

There is also another side to this question. A punishment that degrades the punished will degrade the man who inflicts the punishment, and will degrade the government that procures the infliction. The whipping-post pollutes, not only the whipped, but the whipper, and not only the whipper, but the community at large. Wherever its shadow falls it degrades.

If, then, there is no reforming power in degradation--no deterrent power--for the reason that the degradation of the criminal degrades the community, and in this way produces more criminals, then the next question is, Whether there is any reforming power in torture? The trouble with this is that it hardens and degrades to the last degree the ministers of the law. Those who are not affected by the agonies of the bad will in a little time care nothing for the sufferings of the good.

There seems to be a little of the wild beast in men--a something that is fascinated by suffering, and that delights in inflicting pain. When a government tortures, it is in the same state of mind that the criminal was when he committed his crime. It requires as much malice in those who execute the law, to torture a criminal, as it did in the criminal to torture and kill his victim. The one was a crime by a person, the other by a nation.

There is something in injustice, in cruelty, that tends to defeat itself. There were never as many traitors in England as when the traitor was drawn and quartered--when he was tortured in every possible way--when his limbs, torn and bleeding, were given to the fury of mobs or exhibited pierced by pikes or hung in chains. These frightful punishments produced intense hatred of the government, and traitors continued to increase until they became powerful enough to decide what treason was and who the traitors were, and to inflict the same torments on others.

Think for a moment of what man has suffered in the cause of crime. Think of the millions that have been imprisoned, impoverished and degraded because they were thieves and forgers, swindlers and cheats. Think for a moment of what they have endured--of the difficulties under which they have pursued their calling, and it will be exceedingly hard to believe that they were sane and natural people possessed of good brains, of minds well-poised, and that they did what they did from a choice unaffected by heredity and the countless circ.u.mstances that tend to determine the conduct of human beings.

The other day I was asked these questions: "Has there been as much heroism displayed for the right as for the wrong? Has virtue had as many martyrs as vice?"

For hundreds of years the world has endeavored to destroy the good by force. The expression of honest thought was regarded as the greatest of crimes. Dungeons were filled by the n.o.blest and the best, and the blood of the bravest was shed by the sword or consumed by flame. It was impossible to destroy the longing in the heart of man for liberty and truth. Is it not possible that brute force and cruelty and revenge, imprisonment, torture and death are as impotent to do away with vice as to destroy virtue?

In our country there has been for many years a growing feeling that convicts should neither be degraded nor tortured. It was provided in the Const.i.tution of the United States that "cruel and unusual punishments should not be inflicted." Benjamin Franklin took great interest in the treatment of prisoners, being a thorough believer in the reforming influence of justice, having no confidence whatever in punishment for punishment's sake.

To me it has always been a mystery how the average man, knowing something of the weakness of human nature, something of the temptations to which he himself has been exposed--remembering the evil of his life, the things he would have done had there been opportunity, had he absolutely known that discovery would be impossible--should have feelings of hatred toward the imprisoned.

Is it possible that the average man a.s.saults the criminal in a spirit of self-defence? Does he wish to convince his neighbors that the evil thought and impulse were never in his mind? Are his words a shield that he uses to protect himself from suspicion? For my part, I sympathize sincerely with all failures, with the victims of society, with those who have fallen, with the imprisoned, with the hopeless, with those who have been stained by verdicts of guilty, and with those who, in the moment of pa.s.sion have destroyed, as with a blow, the future of their lives.

How perilous, after all, is the state of man. It is the work of a life to build a great and splendid character. It is the work of a moment to destroy it utterly, from turret to foundation stone. How cruel hypocrisy is!

Is there any remedy? Can anything be done for the reformation of the criminal?

He should be treated with kindness. Every right should be given him, consistent with the safety of society. He should neither be degraded nor robbed. The State should set the highest and n.o.blest example. The powerful should never be cruel, and in the breast of the supreme there should be no desire for revenge.

A man in a moment of want steals the property of another, and he is sent to the penitentiary--first, as it is claimed, for the purpose of deterring others; and secondly, of reforming him. The circ.u.mstances of each individual case are rarely inquired into. Investigation stops when the simple fact of the larceny has been ascertained. No distinctions are made except as between first and subsequent offences. Nothing is allowed for surroundings.

All will admit that the industrious must be protected. In this world it is necessary to work. Labor is the foundation of all prosperity. Larceny is the enemy of industry. Society has the right to protect itself.

The question is, Has it the right to punish?--has it the right to degrade?--or should it endeavor to reform the convict?

A man is taken to the penitentiary. He is clad in the garments of a convict. He is degraded--he loses his name--he is designated by a number. He is no longer treated as a human being--he becomes the slave of the State. Nothing is done for his improvement--nothing for his reformation. He is driven like a beast of burden; robbed of his labor; leased, it may be, by the State to a contractor, who gets out of his hands, out of his muscles, out of his poor brain, all the toil that he can. He is not allowed to speak with a fellow-prisoner. At night he is alone in his cell. The relations that should exist between men are destroyed. He is a convict. He is no longer worthy to a.s.sociate even with his keepers. The jailer is immensely his superior, and the man who turns the key upon him at night regards himself, in comparison, as a model of honesty, of virtue and manhood. The convict is pavement on which those who watch him walk. He remains for the time of his sentence, and when that expires he goes forth a branded man. He is given money enough to pay his fare back to the place from whence he came.

What is the condition of this man? Can he get employment? Not if he honestly states who he is and where he has been. The first thing he does is to deny his personality, to a.s.sume a name. He endeavors by telling falsehoods to lay the foundation for future good conduct. The average man does not wish to employ an ex-convict, because the average man has no confidence in the reforming power of the penitentiary. He believes that the convict who comes out is worse than the convict who went in.

He knows that in the penitentiary the heart of this man has been hardened--that he has been subjected to the torture of perpetual humiliation--that he has been treated like a ferocious beast; and so he believes that this ex-convict has in his heart hatred for society, that he feels he has been degraded and robbed. Under these circ.u.mstances, what avenue is opened to the ex-convict? If he changes his name, there will be some detective, some officer of the law, some meddlesome wretch, who will betray his secret. He is then discharged. He seeks employment again, and he must seek it by again telling what is not true. He is again detected and again discharged. And finally he becomes convinced that he cannot live as an honest man. He naturally drifts back into the society of those who have had a like experience; and the result is that in a little while he again stands in the dock, charged with the commission of another crime. Again he is sent to the penitentiary--and this is the end. He feels that his day is done, that the future has only degradation for him.

The men in the penitentiaries do not work for themselves. Their labor belongs to others. They have no interest in their toil--no reason for doing the best they can--and the result is that the product of their labor is poor. This product comes in compet.i.tion with the work of mechanics, honest men, who have families to support, and the cry is that convict labor takes the bread from the mouths of virtuous people.

VI.

Why should the State take without compensation the labor of these men; and why should they, after having been imprisoned for years, be turned out without the means of support? Would it not be far better, far more economical, to pay these men for their labor, to lay aside their earnings from day to day, from month to month, and from year to year--to put this money at interest, so that when the convict is released after five years of imprisonment he will have several hundred dollars of his own--not merely money enough to pay his way back to the place from which he was sent, but enough to make it possible for him to commence business on his own account, enough to keep the wolf of crime from the door of his heart?

Suppose the convict comes out with five hundred dollars. This would be to most of that cla.s.s a fortune. It would form a breastwork, a fortress, behind which the man could fight temptation. This would give him food and raiment, enable him to go to some other State or country where he could redeem himself. If this were done, thousands of convicts would feel under immense obligation to the Government. They would think of the penitentiary as the place in which they were saved--in which they were redeemed--and they would feel that the verdict of guilty rescued them from the abyss of crime. Under these circ.u.mstances, the law would appear beneficent, and the heart of the poor convict, instead of being filled with malice, would overflow with grat.i.tude. He would see the propriety of the course pursued by the Government. He would recognize and feel and experience the benefits of this course, and the result would be good, not only to him, but to the nation as well.

If the convict worked for himself, he would do the best he could, and the wares produced in the penitentiaries would not cheapen the labor of other men.

VII.