Nature shows a world of varied and changing environment. Into this comes Life--flushing and spreading in every direction. A pretty hard time Life has of it. In the first place it is dog eat dog in every direction; the joy of the hunter and the most unjoyous fear of the hunted. But quite outside of this essential danger, the environment waits, grim and unappeasable, and continuously destroys the innocent myriads who fail to meet the one requirement of life--Adaptation. So we must not be too severe in self-condemnation when we see how foolish, cruel, crazily wasteful, is our attitude toward crime and punishment. We become socially conscious largely through pain, and as we begin to see how much of the pain is wholly of our own causing we are overcome with shame. But the right way for society to face its past is the same as for the individual; to see where it was wrong and stop it--but to waste no time and no emotion over past misdeeds. What is our present state as to crime? It is pretty bad. Some say it is worse than it used to be; others that it is better. At any rate it is bad enough, and a disgrace to our civilization. We have murderers by the thousand and thieves by the million, of all kinds and sizes; we have what we tenderly call "immorality," from the "errors of youth" to the sodden grossness of old age; married, single, and mixed. We have all the old kinds of wickedness and a lot of new ones, until one marvels at the purity and power of human nature, that it should carry so much disease and still grow on to higher things. Also we have punishment still with us; private and public; applied like a rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does a child offend? Punish it! Does a woman offend? Punish her! Does a man offend? Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish them! "What for?" some one suddenly asks. "To make them stop doing it!" "But they have done it!" "To make them not do it again, then." "But they do do it again--and worse." "To prevent other people's doing it, then." "But it does not prevent them--the crime keeps on. What good is your punishment?" What indeed! What is the application of punishment to crime? Its base, its prehistoric base, is simple retaliation; and this is by no means wholly male, let us freely admit. The instinct of resistance, of opposition, of retaliation, lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying law is the law of physics--action and reaction are equal. Life's expression of this law is perfectly natural, but not always profitable. Hit your hand on a stone wall, and the stone wall hits your hand. Very good; you learn that stone walls are hard, and govern yourself accordingly.