But there is a deeper difficulty. If the reformation theory is to be seriously distinguished from the other theories of punishment, it has a meaning which is unjust to the offender himself. It implies that his offence is a merely natural evil, like disease, and can be cured by therapeutic treatment directed to removing its causes. But this is to treat him not as a human being; to treat him as a “patient,” not as an agent; to exclude him from the general recognition that makes us men. (If the therapeutic treatment includes a recognition and chastisement of the offender’s bad will [1]--the form of which chastisement may, of course, be very variously modified--then there is no longer anything to distinguish the reformatory theory from other theories of punishment.) It has been lately pointed out [2] what a confusion is involved in the claim that beings, who are irresponsible and so incapable of guilt, are therefore in the strict sense innocent. Here are the true objects {223} for a pure reformatory theory. Here that may freely be done, as to creatures incapable of rights, which is kindest for them and safest for society, from quasi-medical treatment to extirpation. There is no guilt in them to demand punishment, but there is no human will in them to have the rights of innocence. [1] Plato’s reformatory theory seems to involve this. [2] Mr. Bradley, in the _International Journal of Ethics_, April, 1894. But, applied to responsible human beings, such a theory, if really kept to its distinctive contention, is an insult. It leads to the notion that the State may take hold of any man, whose life or ideas are thought capable of improvement, and set to work to ameliorate them by forcible treatment. There is no true punishment except where one is an offender against a system of rights which he shares, and therefore against himself. And such an offender has a right to the recognition of his hostile will; it is inhuman to treat him as a wild animal or a child, whom we simply mould to our aims. Without such a recognition, to be punished is not, according to the old Scotch phrase, to be “justified.”