to Louis XV., was very common in the middle ages, being
(like witchcraft, trances, and self-immurement) a pathological or
abnormal manifestation of religious emotion, which in those times
had an extraordinary development. And the habit of blasphemy
diminished under the psychological and social evolution of our own
days, precisely when it ceased to be punished. Or, rather, it
continued to this day, as in Tuscany, where the Tuscan penal code
(Art. 136), which survived until December 31, 1889, still punished
it with five years' imprisonment. The illusion as to the efficacy
of punishment is so deeply rooted that a proposal was made in the
Senate, in 1875, to include this penalty in the new Italian penal
code. And at Murcia, in Spain, trials for blasphemy have lately
been re-established.
Mittermaier observed that, if in England and Scotland there were
far fewer cases of false witness, perjury, and resistance to
authority than in Ireland and on the Continent, this must be due
in great measure to national character, which is one of the
hereditary elements of normal as well as of abnormal and criminal
life.
Thus even apart from statistics we can satisfy ourselves that
crimes and punishments belong to two different spheres; but when
statistics support the teaching of history, no doubt can remain as
to the very slight (I had almost said the absence of any)
deterrent effect of punishments upon crime.
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