Separation from society is rendered absolutely necessary by the criminal's own behaviour, if by his behaviour he shows that he is not capable of using freedom profitably. But if his separation is to serve any real purpose whatever it must be accompanied by an educational process which will work him back to that point where he left the social track and then so propel him forward that he may recover his lost ground, and when restored to society be enabled to identify himself with its progressive system. So far our penal system is a mistake. Whatever it may be theoretically, practically it is only vindictive. Its failure has caused some to despair and others to reflect. Chapter V. ELIMINATION--DR. CHAPPLE'S PROPOSAL. In the last chapter it was shown that capital punishment sought for its justification in the theory that certain criminals had assumed an attitude of permanent and aggressive hostility towards society. Their presence in society is regarded as a menace to human life, and no moral improvement is expected to result from their imprisonment. So hopeless is this class of criminal regarded as being that, so it is declared, no other policy save that of extermination can be considered. In primitive society criminals were less numerous than in our own time; but those that did then exist belonged, almost all of them, to the worst type. There being no public institutions for the administration of justice, practically one course only remained open, and that was, that the person wronged should seek to avenge himself as best he could, and the death of the wrong-doer was generally the satisfaction that he sought. As civilization has advanced, criminals have become more numerous; but they have taken to crime by more gradual steps. Society, too, has deprived the individual of the right of wreaking his own vengeance, and has erected institutions for the purpose of determining guilt and apportioning punishment. From the days of Noah, deeds of blood and other crimes of a serious nature, have been punished by death and from then, until this present day, the one idea underlying the administration of justice has been that society should get rid of its criminals as speedily as possible. Repression alone was thought to be efficacious, reformation was scarcely thought of. Of late years the criminal has been more carefully studied by his fellow-beings. Some have studied him as a monster and believed him to have the heart of a beast; others have studied him as a man and had faith in his possibilities. The former have noticed the failure of repressive methods, such as flogging and other penal severities, and have in despair been led to advocate that the only possible remedy is that of extermination. The latter have discovered that the failure of these repressive methods but imposes upon society the obligation of adopting a system of an entirely different order and with an entirely different object, viz: a system for the reformation of the criminal.