Peter Richard Newman

Vast and Lidless —

Pharos

 

Lenny Meyer :
Am I bothering you?
I'm sorry, I'll put it out.

You Damn Fool - 

The Presence of God 

is in The Smoke
 

Name's Lenny Meyer.
And you are?


SuperMax :
Max.

Lenny Meyer :
Is that Max? Max...?

SuperMax :
Max Cohen.

So, Max does not know it, 

but he is a High Priest

Probably worth a Google.

 
Lenny Meyer :
Cohen! Jewish.
It's OK. I'm a Jew too.
Do you practise?

SuperMax :
....No. I'm not 

interested in 

religion.

Lenny Meyer :
Did you ever hear 

of Kabbalah?

SuperMax :
No.

Lenny Meyer :
Jewish mysticism.

SuperMax :
Look, I'm busy right here.

Lenny Meyer :
I understand --
But right now is a very exciting 

moment in Our History.

Right now is a critical 

moment in Time.

SuperMax :
Really?

Lenny Meyer :
Yeah. It's very exciting.
Have you ever put on Tefillin?
You know Tefillin?

Yeah, I know, it looks strange.
It's an amazing Tradition.

It has a tremendous Power. 

It's a mitzvah Jewish men should do.
Mitzvahs, good deeds.
They purify us.
Bring us closer to God.
Wanna try it?

SuperMax :
Shit.

Lenny Meyer :
You all right, Max?

Sol 

(which mean 'Sun' and 

is short for 'Solomon') :

It's been a month. 

You haven't taken a single break.

I'm so close.

Sol 

(which mean 'Sun' and 

is short for 'Solomon') :

Have you met the new fish 

my niece bought me?

Fish = Jesus  

'Christ is a Meta-Fish' - Jordan Peterson

I named her Icarus after you,  

my renegade pupil.

You fly too high, you'll get burnt.

I look at you, I see myself 

30 years ago :

My Greatest pupil.

Published at 16, PhD at 20.

But Life isn't just mathematics, Max.

I spent 40 years searching 

for patterns in Pi.

I found nothing.

 SuperMax :

You found things.

Sol 

(which mean 'Sun' and 

is short for 'Solomon') :

I found things... 

but not a pattern.

Not a pattern.

SuperMax :

11:22 Personal Note :

Sol died a little when he stopped 

research on Pi.

It wasn't just the stroke 

He stopped caring.

How could he stop, 

when he was so close to seeing Pi 

for what it really is?

How could you stop believing 

that there is a pattern, an ordered shape behind those numbers, when you were so close?

We see The Simplicity of The Circle, 

we see the maddening complexity 

of the endless numbers -

3.14 off into infinity.

Are the stars out tonight?

I don't mind

if they're cloudy or bright

For I only have eyes

For you, dear

I don't mind

if we're in a...

Lenny Meyer :

Hey, Max. Lenny Meyer.

I'll put it out.

So... What do you do?

SuperMax :

I work with computers. Math.

Lenny Meyer :

Math? What kind of math?

SuperMax :

Number Theory. 

Research mostly.

Lenny Meyer :

No way. I work with 

numbers myself.

I mean, not traditional.

I work with The Torah. Amazing!

Hebrew is all math.

It's all numbers.

You know that? Look. 

Ancient Jews used Hebrew 

as their numerical system.

Each letter is a number.

The Hebrew A, Aleph, is 1 .

B, Bet, is 2.

Understand? 

But look - The Numbers 

are interrelated.

Take the Hebrew 

for Father, ab.

Aleph, Bet.

The word for Mother, haim.

Aleph, Mem.

The sum of 3 and 41, 44.

Right? 

Now, the Hebrew 

word for Child - 

Mother, Father, Child.

Yelev.

That's 10, 30 and 4.

Torah is just a long 

string of numbers.

Some say that it's A Code, 

sent to us from God.

SuperMax :

…..That's kind of interesting.

Lenny Meyer :

That's kid's stuff, check this out.

The Garden of Eden, Kadem.

Numerical translation, 144.

The value of Tree of Knowledge, 

in The Garden. Right?

Aat ha haim. 

2, 33, 144,  233.

You can take those numbers...

 SuperMax :

Those are Fibonacci numbers.

Lenny Meyer :

They're...?

SuperMax :

You know, like 

The Fibonacci sequence?

 Lenny Meyer :

Fibonacci?

 SuperMax :

[ Leonardo ] Fibonacci is 

an Italian mathematician 

in the 13th. Century

If you divide 144 into 233, 

the result approaches Theta.

Lenny Meyer :

Theta?

SuperMax :

Theta -- The Greek symbol for 

The Golden Ratio, 

The Golden Spiral.

Lenny Meyer :

Wow. I never 

saw that before.

That's like that series 

you find in Nature?

Like The Face of 

a Sunflower?

SuperMax :

Wherever there are spirals.

 Lenny Meyer :

See, there's Math everywhere.

Hey, I... Max?

13:26. 

Restate My Assumptions.

One : 
Mathematics is 

The Language of Nature.

Two : 
Everything around us can be 

represented and understood 

through numbers.

Three : 
If you graph The Numbers 

of any System,
patterns emerge.
 
Therefore, there are patterns 

everywhere in Nature.

So what about 

the stock market?

A universe of numbers 

that represents the 

global economy.

Millions of human 

hands at Work, 
billions of minds.

A vast network 

screaming with Life. 

An Organism.
A natural Organism.

My Hypothesis : 
Within the stock market, 

there is a pattern,
right in front of me, 

playing with 

the numbers.

Always has been.

10:18, press RETURN.

The Pantheon of Dynamic Discord

The Pantheon of Gods from The Whoniverse | Doctor Who

"There is The Toymaker, 

The God of Games. 

There is Trickster, 

The God of Traps. 

There is Maestro, 

The God of Music. 

There is Reprobate, 

The God of Spite. 

There is The Mara, 

The God of Beasts."

Discover The Gods of old 

and The Gods of new from 

The Whoniverse... but beware 

The One who Waits.

Tom

The Fourth Doctor

Tom Baker's Best Moments 

as The Doctor | Doctor Who

They Have Been Induced to Forget About It

"....I Thought it was 

a Very Good Script --"

Doctor Who Shada Intro 1992

.....hello? hello....? 

Hello? Anybody there....? 

....why! It's a museum...! 

....I've always felt at 

Home in museums....

Giant Robot -- beat you; 

Cybermen, beat you;
Daleks, beat you; 

Davros -- Davros.... 

I beat him, as well --

I was irresistible in those 

days, irresistible ....

Yeti…

Gundan robot…

Kraag…..

Kraag…?

SHA-DA…..!!

…..ssh..!!

….the untransmitted story —

why wasn't it transmitted, now — 

….of course, We didn't finish it —

starring Denis Carey, and Christopher Neame…… 

Written by Douglas Adams ….

I thought it was a very good script... and 

there was an invisible spaceship :

Douglas said "anyone can design 

a visible spaceship but to design 

an invisible spaceship, 

that needs imagination; 

....I think he said that, or did he say -- 

….I think he said genius, yes -- 

…..he said genius. 

Poor old Douglas….. 

I wonder what became of him;

….that's right, Cambridge;

about 1979….. 

punting on The Cam….

There was, a choir 

on The Corner as 

I biked by, singing 

foreign song 

or some other Train song —

..…Daniel Hill - I'd heard 

he'd become The Manager 

of an old people's home, 

or maybe he went into an old people's home, I can't remember; 

or maybe he was always old, 

I don't know —

and Victoria Burgoyne — 

it was her first Television, 

and when she heard 

it was cancelled she 

was so unhappy….

She cried a lot;

We all cried a lot….

We were all very sad —

Shada…..

SHADA…..

SHA-DA……

The Human Trap

 

[BUZZER SOUNDS] 

[LOCK CLICKS] 

This way, sir. 

Q. :

You? You summoned me? 

Young Guinan :

You must be Q. 

Took your damn time. 

Q. :

And you are that multi-celled, sanctimonious, 

droning shrew known as Guinan. 

Right, it's the 21st century. 

Our paths have yet to cross. 

Young Guinan :

I thought The Summoning 

didn't work —

Q. :

"Summoning"? 

The summoning 

is a sacred ritual. 

Not a chat by which you bipeds 

exchange the nauseating 

minutiae of your pathetic lives. 

Young Guinan :

When the ritual stalled, 

I felt something. 

Emptiness and Fear. 

I thought it was me. 

But it wasn't. I feel it 

on you. You're dying. 

Q. :

Another quality I sincerely loathe 

about your species. Empathy. 

Young Guinan :

I knew you could kill each other. 

But otherwise, aren't you... 

Q. :

Immortal? So I believed. 

Yet now... for the first time 

as I look across the temporal 

horizon, it darkens. 

You think I'm dying. 

I prefer to believe that 

I am on the threshold 

of The Unknowable. 

When I first I felt it, I thought 

to myself, "This is good. 

This is new." Infinite Life, 

after all, has its drawbacks. 

And so I prepared myself 

to be enveloped 

in the warm glow 

of Meaning. 

Well, that moment 

has yet to come. 

Not even a glimmer. 

Dying stars burn brighter 

as they spin towards extinction. 

I, on the other hand, seem to be 

simply disappearing... 

into nothing. 

Why do you think it took 

me so long to get here? 

Young Guinan :

That's why you walked in here today? 

Why you're using humans as 

your game pieces? 

Q. : (snaps away 

impotently at Thin Air —)

You see that? I'm honestly trying 

to vaporise you at this moment. 

Young Guinan :

This thing you're doing to Picard, 

it's how you're hoping to find... 

Meaning in Your Life? 

Q. :

I now have A Lifetime. 

Can a single act redeem 

A Lifetime? 

Young Guinan :

Why bring him 

to The Past? 

Q. :

I did not bring him into The Past. 

He did that on his own. 

There are many forms 

of Time Travel. 

Young Guinan :

But he's trapped here. 

Q. :

The Trap... is immaterial. 

It's The Escape that counts. 

I'll see you when I see 

you... unfortunately. 

[BUZZER SOUNDS]

[LOCK CLICKS] 

Humans. They're all 

trapped in The Past. 

[DOOR CLOSES]

Christopher Walken and The Heart of Darkness

Mel Gibson - Christopher Walken Story

Making of Batman Returns (1992) - Max Shreck Origins

MAX :

I'd offer you coffee, but my assistant 

is using her vacation time.

Bruce Wayne :

Good time. Everyone but The Bandits'll 

be slacking off till after the New Year.

MAX :

I'm not sure I like The Inference.

Bruce Wayne :

I didn't realize I made one.

MAX :

I'm pushing this Power-plant NOW, 

because it'll cost more later.

A million saved is a million earned.

Bruce Wayne :

I commissioned this report. Take a look at it.

Gotham City has a Power surplus. 

I'm sure you KNOW that.

My Question is: 

"What's your angle?"

MAX :

"Power surplus?" Bruce, shame on you!

No such thing. One can never have too much Power.

If My Life has a meaning, that's The Meaning.

Bruce Wayne :

I'll fight you. I've already spoken 

to The Mayor and we agree.

MAX :

Mayors come and go, 

blue-bloods tire easy;

you think he could go 15 rounds 

with Mohammed Schrek...?

The Prince of fuckin' Darkness :

“He's an industrialist uh he owns, among other things 

has met uh Schrek's department store —”

Originally, the Max Shreck character, he is 

The Golden Boy -Son of The Cobblepots, 

and it turns out that He and Penguin are Brothers and 

there was that kind of dichotomy in the movie of like 

The Saintly Brother who runs The City 

and the ultimate Black sheep who was 

thrown in The Sewer and 

how they come up together

 but the script and the movie 

is way too rich to begin with 

and that was just another layer 

that we finally had to lose.

“When I suggested to Tim Burton, 

“Tim, I thought of Christopher Walken —”

and Tim, who loves ghouls and 

skeletons and odd things said 

“Oh, no —”, he said “He’s…. he's..

I'm afraid of him 

he scares me —

And I said “But Tim — you're 

supposed to be afraid 

of Max Schrek -- 

Christopher Walken 

They made up a fictional character 

that's not in Batman's universe, and 

suddenly he becomes the most exciting character 

in the film -- well, sorry but that's what you get 

when you put Christopher Walken in a role 

The Prince of fuckin' Darkness :

He says that there's no such thing as too much power 

he says that, that's what his life is about, now —

that's uh those are actually his lines 

I think he means it —

MAX :

Bottom line, she tries to blackmail me,

I'll drop her out a higher window —

meantime, got better fish to fry 

The Prince of fuckin' Darkness :

I think Max probably didn't have a lot of education 

and that he sort of made his own way, you know —

The Media :

What's The Deal, Mr. Schrek? 

Is The Penguin a personal friend ?

MAX :

Yes he's a personal friend, of this whole city  —

so have a heart — give The Constitution 

a rest, okay it's Christmas 

The Prince of fuckin' Darkness :

I Think that Max and The Penguin….for their 

own reasons enjoy each other's company, 

probably because when you're like that 

there aren't that many people 

you can talk to —

Punishment

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment 

C.S. Lewis

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make Good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

The distinction will become clearer if we ask who will be qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their propriety from the criminal’s deservings. On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognizable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question n which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert. The only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures. But these are not questions on which anyone is entitled to have an opinion simply because he is a man. He is not entitled to an opinion even if, in addition to being a man, he should happen also to be a jurist, a Christian, and a moral theologian. For they are not question about principle but about matter of fact; and for such cuiquam in sua arte credendum. Only the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter : only the psychotherapist can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of us, speaking simply as men, to say, ‘but this punishment is hideously unjust, hideously disproportionate to the criminal’s deserts’. The experts with perfect logic will reply, ‘but nobody was talking about deserts. No one was talking about punishment in your archaic vindictive sense of the word. Here are the statistics proving that this treatment deters. Here are the statistics proving that this other treatment cures. What is your trouble?

The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice. It might be argued that since this transference results from an abandonment of the old idea of punishment, and, therefore, of all vindictive motives, it will be safe to leave our criminals in such hands. I will not pause to comment on the simple-minded view of fallen human nature which such a belief implies. Let us rather remember that the ‘cure’ of criminals is to be compulsory; and let us then watch how the theory actually works in the mind or the Humanitarian. The immediate starting point of this article was a letter I read in one of our Leftist weeklies. The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse. What he complained of was not the shutting up but the letting out. On his remedial view of punishment the offender should, of course, be detained until he was cured. And or course the official straighteners are the only people who can say when that is. The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it. Which of us, if he stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?

It may be said that by the continued use of the word punishment and the use of the verb ‘inflict’ I am misrepresenting Humanitarians. They are not punishing, not inflicting, only healing. But do not let us be deceived by a name. To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of ‘normality’ hatched in a Vienese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors hav succeeded or I grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success—who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious. Only enormous ill-desert could justify it; but ill-desert is the very conception which the Humanitarian theory has thrown overboard.

If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the new theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terrorem, make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a very wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example arose’ arose. You then, as the saying is, killed two birds with one stone; in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it.

But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on dessert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The deterrent effect demands that the public should draw the moral, ‘If we do such an act we shall suffer like that man.’ The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty. But every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial. When a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment (call it ‘cure’ if you prefer0 of an innocent victim, provided that the public can be cheated into thinking him will be so wicked. The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.

It is, indeed, important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.

In reality, however, we must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a Humanitarian theory of punishment. A great many popular blue prints for a Christian society are merely what the Elizabethans called ‘eggs in moonshine’ because they assume that the whole society is Christian or that the Christians are in control. This is not so in most contemporary States. Even if it were, our rulers would still be fallen men, and, therefore neither ver wise nor very good. As it is, they will usually be unbelievers. And since wisdom and virtue are not the only or the commonest qualifications for a place in the government, they will not often be even the best unbelievers.

The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic. In ordinary medicine there were painful operations and fatal operations; so in this. But because they are ‘treatment’, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice.

This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, and was indeed the error of a noble mind. But the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. This means that you start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no on but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.

There is a fine sentence in Bunyan: ‘It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.’ There is a fine couplet, too, in John Ball:

‘Be war or ye be wo; Knoweth your frend from your foo.’