Answer.--There are two sorts of retributory punishments.
Discipline, never good, had been growing worse. Punishments were unknown.
The Bishop read to me three punishments of which he said, I could take my choice.
This is heretical; for it would do away with the distinction of rewards and punishments.
He anticipates rewards and punishments, and learns to solicit the former and deprecate the latter.
It is said that Peter took such a savage delight in these punishments, that he executed many of the victims with his own hands.
So this thing that shortens life, and is used as the most cruel of punishments in our prisons, is the thing that will destroy all the life and force of a speech.
And what is the use of these lawyers and judges who don't decide civil cases with justice and recognize themselves the uselessness of punishments in criminal cases?
He reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignent for tears, he condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless and abnormal punishments.