punishment prevents the criminal for a while from repeating his criminal
deed. But it is evident that the punishment is not imposed until after
the deed has been done. It is a remedy directed against effects, but it
does not touch the causes, the roots, of the evil.

We may say that in social life penalties have the same relation to crime
that medicine has to disease. After a disease has developed in an
organism, we have recourse to a physician. But he cannot do anything
else but to reach the effects in some single individual. On the other
hand, if the individual and the collectivity had obeyed the rules of
preventive hygiene, the disease would have been avoided 90 times in 100,
and would have appeared only in extreme and exceptional cases, where a
wound or an organic condition break through the laws of health. Lack of
providence on the part of man, which is due to insufficient expression
of the forces of the intellect and pervades so large a part of human
life, is certainly to blame for the fact that mankind chooses to use
belated remedies rather than to observe the laws of health, which demand
a greater methodical control of one's actions and more foresight,
because the remedy must be applied before the disease becomes apparent.
I say occasionally that human society acts in the matter of criminality
with the same lack of forethought that most people do in the matter of
tooth-ache. How many individuals do not suffer from tooth-ache,
especially in the great cities? And yet any one convinced of the
miraculous power of hygiene could easily clean his teeth every day and
prevent the microbes of tooth rot from thriving, thereby saving his
teeth from harm and pain. But it is tedious to do this every day. It
implies a control of one's self. It cannot be done without the
scientific conviction that induces men to acquire this habit. Most
people say: "Oh well, if that tooth rots, I'll bear the pain." But when
the night comes in which they cannot sleep for toothache, they will