3. Aristotle seems hard upon the masses, likening them to brutes who must be governed by the whip. He may be supposed to speak from experience of the men of his time. If humanity has somewhat improved in two and twenty centuries, yet it cannot be contended that the whip is grown unnecessary and beyond the whip the sword. But we must observe a certain _modus operandi_ of punishment which Aristotle has not noted, a more human mode than the terror of slavish fear. Just punishment, felt as such, stimulates the conscience to discern and abhor the crime. Men would think little of outraging their own nature by excess, did they not know that the laws of God and man forbid such outrage. Again, they would think little even of those laws, were not the law borne out by the sanction of punishment. A law that may be broken with impunity is taken to be the toying of a legislator not in earnest. Men here are as children. A child is cautioned against lying. He reckons little of the caution: he tells a lie, and a flogging ensues. Thereupon his mind reverts to what he was told: he sees that the warning was meant in earnest. He reflects that it must have been a wicked thing, that lie which his father, the object of his fond reverence, chastises so sternly. If the thing had been let pass, he would scarcely have regarded it as wicked. Next time he is more on his guard, not merely because he fears a beating, but because he understands better than before that lying is wrong. The awe in which grown-up people stand of "a red judge," is not simple fear, like that which keeps the wolf from the flock guarded by shepherds and their dogs: but they are alarmed into reflection upon the evil which he is God's minister to avenge, and they are moved to keep the law, "not only for wrath, but for conscience sake." From this we see that for punishment to be really salutary, its justice must be manifest to the culprit, or to the lookers on, at least in their cooler moments. A punishment the justice of which is not discernible, may quell for the moment, but it does not moralise, nor abidingly deter. There must be an apparent proportion between the offence and the punishment. A Draconian code, visiting petty offences with the severity due to high misdemeanours, is more of an irritant than a represser of crime, because it goes beyond men's consciences.