The appeal to justice denoted in the words “To everyone according to his works” is frequently heard in the defence of punishment. This is an excellent maxim in Guyau’s opinion, but he is careful to point out that it is purely one of social economics. It is a plea for a just distribution of the products of labour, but does not apply at all to the problem of punishment. In a manner which recalls the remarks of Renan, Guyau sees in evil-doing a lack of culture, or rather of that sociability, which comes of social culture, from consciousness of a membership of society and a solidarity with one’s fellows. In vice and in virtue alike the human will appears aspiring to better things according to its lights. As virtue is its own reward, so is evil; and the moralist must say to the wicked: “Verily they have their reward” (_Comme si ce n’était pas assez pour eux d’être méchants_). Guyau comments upon the gradual modifications of punishment from a social point of view. There was the day when the chastisement was infinitely worse than the crime itself. Then came the morality of reciprocity, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” an ethic which represented a high ideal for primitive man to reach, and one to which, Guyau thinks, we have yet to reach to-day in some spheres of life. Yet a further moral development will show how foolish, in a civilised society, are wrath and hatred of the criminal and the cry for vengeance. Society must aim at ensuring protection for itself with the minimum of individual suffering. Punishment must be regarded as an example for the future rather than as revenge or compensation. In the individual himself Guyau observes how powerful can be the inner sanction of remorse, the suffering caused by the unrealised ideal. This is perhaps the only real moral punishment, and it is one which society cannot itself directly enforce. Only by increasing “sociability” and social sensitiveness can this sanction be indirectly developed. Herein lies the highest ethical ideal, far more concrete and living, in Guyau’s opinion, than the rigorism of a Kant or the “scholastic”[35] temper of a Renouvier. Charity or love for all men, whatever their value morally, intellectually or physically, must, he claims, “be the final end pursued even by public opinion.”In co-operation and sociability, he finds the vital moral ideal; in love and brotherhood, he finds the real sanction which should operate.”Love supposes mutuality of love,” he says; and there is one idea superior to that of justice, that is the idea of brotherhood, and he remarks with a humane tenderness “the guilty have probably more need for love than anyone else.” “I have,” he cries, “two hands—the one for gripping the hand of those with whom I march along in life, the other to lift up the fallen. Indeed, to these I should be able to stretch out both hands together.”[36] [35] This is Guyau’s word to describe Renouvier, whom he regards as far too much under the influence of Kant.