reason, which accompanies the transgression of a moral law- namely,
its ill desert. Now the notion of punishment, as such, cannot be
united with that of becoming a partaker of happiness; for although
he who inflicts the punishment may at the same time have the
benevolent purpose of directing this punishment to this end, yet it
must first be justified in itself as punishment, i.e., as mere harm,
so that if it stopped there, and the person punished could get no
glimpse of kindness hidden behind this harshness, he must yet admit
that justice was done him, and that his reward was perfectly
suitable to his conduct. In every punishment, as such, there must
first be justice, and this constitutes the essence of the notion.
Benevolence may, indeed, be united with it, but the man who has
deserved punishment has not the least reason to reckon upon this.
Punishment, then, is a physical evil, which, though it be not
connected with moral evil as a natural consequence, ought to be
connected with it as a consequence by the principles of a moral
legislation. Now, if every crime, even without regarding the
physical consequence with respect to the actor, is in itself
punishable, that is, forfeits happiness (at least partially), it is
obviously absurd to say that the crime consisted just in this, that be
has drawn punishment on himself, thereby injuring his private
happiness (which, on the principle of self-love, must be the proper
notion of all crime). According to this view, the punishment would
be the reason for calling anything a crime, and justice would, on
the contrary, consist in omitting all punishment, and even
preventing that which naturally follows; for, if this were done, there
would no longer be any evil in the action, since the harm which
otherwise followed it, and on account of which alone the action was
called evil, would now be prevented. To look, however, on all
rewards and punishments as merely the machinery in the hand of a