These are so many psychological causes
which, conflicting with the natural fear of unpleasant
consequences, weaken the repellent force of legal punishment,
whilst they are unknown to natural punishment.
There is also another psychological condition which, undermining
even the force of natural punishment, almost entirely destroys the
power of social punishment; and that is improvidence. We see, in
fact, that even the most certain natural consequences are defied,
and lose most of their power to guard an improvident man from
anti-natural and dangerous actions. Now in regard to legal
punishment, even apart from passionate impulse, it is known that
criminals, occasional and other, are specially improvident, in
common with savages and children. This weakness is
conspicuous enough in the lower and less instructed classes, but
amongst criminals it is a genuine characteristic of psychological
infirmity.
Now, whilst a very slight force is sufficient to produce very
great and constant effects, when it acts in harmony with natural
tendency and environment, every process, on the other hand, which
is opposed to the natural tendencies of man, or which does not
follow them closely, encounters a resistance which triumphs in the
last resort.
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