300 The Ideal State 



the noble in deed, even although they demand sacrifices 

 of him, he knows and he says : " It is good for me to 

 be here." They are so congenial to his nature that he 

 never can again be satisfied with the inferior. So much 

 is this the case that those who are best acquainted with 

 the Good declare with one voice that it is better to 

 have it with suffering than to have the whole world 

 without it — that is the meaning of " gaining one's 

 own soul." 



To pursue the argument, we are entitled to say that 

 society supports the belief in the essential good of man's 

 nature in the punishment inflicted on those who do 

 evil. But it is fortunate that in European countries 

 we are beginning to pay heed to the idea of reform in 

 punishment. We are coming to see that punishment 

 that does not reform is sheer brutality. The very fact 

 that society punishes evil shows that men have got the 

 conviction from experience — and from experience be- 

 cause the Divine is immanent within them — that evil 

 is anti-social — that man's nature is such that it hurts 

 him — that it is the enemy. If it were not, they would 

 not punish evil at all. It has been said that society 

 punishes not from any interest in the Good, but from 

 interest in self — in pure selfish protection of its in- 

 dividual interests. It must be admitted that this does 

 affect the question, but it could not be otherwise in our 

 state of society, which is so largely controlled by 

 present-day material interests. It must be remembered, 

 however, that this just proves that man's nature is such 

 that it is his interest to crush the Evil and cultivate the 

 Good. In the ' ' Ideal State ' ' the aim of punishment must 

 be more and more to reform the evildoer and get rid of 

 the Evil ; and much more attention must be given to 

 prevention than to punishment. Dickens— one of the 

 greatest of benefactors of the poor and the afflicted — 

 pointed out long ago that the first time the Government 



