public is excluded from executions, which clearly indicates a decisive rejection of the theory of intimidation. The truth is that the severity of the punishment has no effect upon the frequency or the savagery of crimes. The criminality of a community depends on the value and emphasis of the moral education which it bestows upon the rising generation. It can prevent its members, at any rate the average, normal type, from developing into criminals. But the fear of punishment has no deterrent effect upon those whose criminal impulses have not been subjugated by social discipline. The severity of the punishment does not contribute anything to the defence of society. It only proves that the lawgiver and the criminal judges are on the lowest level of civilization which corresponds to a widespread and barbarous criminality, and that their modes of thought and feeling are horribly like those of the criminals whom they sentence to torture, the gallows, and the wheel. Positive law aims at defending society, and tries to attain its end by punishing transgressions. It provides no reward for conscientious obedience. The law has no honours to bestow on blamelessness and virtue. Society felt the want of this and made attempts to encourage honourable conduct by conferring distinctions, just as it tries to intimidate vice by punishing crime. These attempts were not particularly happy. The bestowal of titles and orders is no recognition of virtue, but a means adopted by governments to ensure devotion to power. An arrangement was made in some places to honour model citizens in public and crown them with laurels, but it soon came to grief owing to indifference and mockery. A private individual wanted to fill this gap in social institutions. The Count of Montyon, a son of the eighteenth century, whose philosophy he had imbibed, instituted the prizes for virtue which are distributed annually by the French Academy. They are bestowed on modest integrity in humble circumstances which has manifested a sense of duty, neighbourly love and self-sacrifice. This friend of man has had few imitators, and that is understandable. Sound common sense realizes that rewards like the Montyon prizes for virtue do not with the infallibility of a natural law fall to the lot of merit, but are nearly always adjudicated to the prizewinner by chance, by recommendation, and by all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with virtue; and it seems unjust that among equal claims some should be satisfied while others, the great majority, are not. It would be vain to contend that one virtue which goes empty-handed is not unfairly treated when another gets a benefit on which it has not counted, and that in a moral character, such as alone would be eligible for a prize for virtue, there is no room for envy. That would be the moral of the Gospel concerning the labourers who came at the eleventh hour, which has met with opposition from others besides the contemporaries of Jesus.