Practical men declare that ``the prohibitive penal law ought to be regarded as the first and most important of preventive laws.'' The pr<e'>fets in their circulars, being concerned about the increase of crime, put forward the most vigilant and severe repression as a sovereign remedy. A counsellor of the French Cour de Cassation writes that ``in a worthy system of social police there is no better guarantee for order and safety than intimidation.'' The Keeper of the Seals, in his report on French penal statistics for 1876, speaking of the continued increase of indecent assaults, comes to the conclusion that ``in any case, only firm and energetic repression can avail against a lamentable increase of crimes against morality.'' And more recently another Keeper of the Seals ended his report on the statistics of 1826 to 1880 by observing that ``the growth of crime can only be opposed by an incessantly vigorous repression.'' M. Tarde agreed with this conclusion, saying that ``if crimes are only, as has been said, railway accidents of a society travelling at full speed, it must not be forgotten that, the faster the train, the stronger must be the brake . . . and it is certain that such a state of affairs demands an increase or a new departure of repression and punishment.'' It may be admitted that our conclusion is not a novelty; but, as Stuart Mill said, there are two ways of effecting useful innovations, to discover what was not known before, or else to repeat with new demonstrations the truths which had been forgotten. And this illusion as to the influence of punishments <p 100>is so widespread that it is well to inquire into its historic and psychological arguments; for, as Spencer says, in order to decide as to the value of an idea, it is useful to examine its genealogy. We may pass by the foundation of primitive vengeance, which from the age of private combats passed into the spirit and form of the earliest penal laws, and still subsists as a more or less unconscious and enfeebled residuum in modern society. We may also pass by the hereditary effect of the traditions of medi<ae>val severity, which excite an instinctive sympathy for stern punishment in connection with every crime.