Our justices are inclined to believe that if a new world-conception arises, (which by the bye will as we believe not be materialistic nor will it destroy the idea of moral responsibility, although it may change our views about guilt,) their whole system of jurisprudence will break down. They are afraid of a _pereat justicia et vivat mundus_. Justice Schiffer is not at all anxious to prove the truth of the old world-conception, he is satisfied with proving that the new world-conception is incompatible with the old view of justice. Criminal law means punishment and punishment presupposes the idea of guilt. He argues: “The question remains whether the conflict between the new and the old world-conception could be avoided by adapting our views of justice to the new world-conception; yet this question is to be denied, for the notions of guilt and punishment belong to each other according to logical, ethical, and moral principles. To punish without assuming guilt is as nonsensical as it is immoral.” It would lead us too far here to show that moral responsibility still subsists on the supposition of a strict determinism and that the criminal law with its punishments will not be abolished in the future. Yet there is no doubt that our views of punishment will have to be changed; indeed they have changed and how much they have changed, can be learned by a comparison of an execution of to-day with one of a few hundred years ago. The idea of punishment in the sense of inflicting pain as a retribution has gone and it has gone forever. There is no more burning of the criminal with hot irons, or twitching with hot tongs, or tearing out his tongue, or stretching on the wheel. The criminal is executed with as little pain to him as possible. Why this change? Because a new world-conception has entirely altered our views of punishment and it is going to alter them still more. Penology is not to be based upon sentimentality as some so-called philanthropists intend to do; nevertheless it is to and it will become humane because we have abandoned the old conception of guilt which as Justice Schiffer correctly states was a fundamental idea in the old jurisprudence, and this antiquated conception of guilt has partly but not as yet entirely been overcome. The church is in a position similar to that of the criminal law courts. A change of our world-conception has set in and the church is not as yet adapted to the change. The church having found it necessary for its purpose of preaching ethics to insist on the belief in a world-conception which demonstrates a moral world order, now attempts to perpetuate certain errors of our ancestors’ conception of this moral world-order.