the illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinction between
the future and the past; they make actions belonging to periods so
distinct, the subjects of similar feelings; they live only in the
present, or in the past, as it is present. It is in this that the
philosopher excels one of the many; it is this which distinguishes
the doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism; and that
determination of the will, by which it is the active source of future
events, from that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract
liability of irremediable actions is attached, according to the
notions of the vulgar.

This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge;
the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the
past; provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources
of evil. The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously
in future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing
an enemy, are the sources from which the enormous superstitions
implied in the words cited have arisen.]

Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in
general, in a degree which the reformation and the restraint of
those who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and
none more than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses
of men. It is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which
the penal code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished
from all others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be
admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by
a consideration of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners,
and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life.
Governments which derive their institutions from the existence of