One thing seems plain--there must be an act of faith. Worldly wisdom and enlightened selfishness have been tried out thoroughly and are thoroughly discredited. Their proposal was first to cure crime, and only after that was done, to abolish prisons. But it turns out that prisons generate, teach, perpetuate and inflame crime; never extirpate it, though they often deter specific persons from continuing a criminal career by either killing them outright, or destroying in them their effective spiritual manhood. Therefore the selfishly enlightened and worldly-wise shake their heads and declare that crime in criminals is ineradicable. If medicine for crime be futile, save as a temporary physical preventive, all that is left to us is to continue it as a preventive, while admitting its impotence as a cure. Protection of society is the paramount consideration. Yes: but is society protected by prisons? John Jones has been jailed for burglary, it is true; but straightway Tom Brown, Jem Smith and Reginald Montmorency start in as train-robber, murderer and confidence man. We have sown the dragon's tooth, and reap three for one. Lynch your negro, and before the smell of roast flesh is out of the air, several fresh cases of rape are reported.--But there is no visible connection between alleged cause and effect--it just happens so.--Yes, but if it does happen almost invariably, we cannot avoid the suspicion that a connection, even though invisible to the outward eye, there must be. Moreover, on what grounds does society claim protection against evils for which its own constitution and administration are responsible? The greatest happiness of the greatest number?--Are we so happy, then? The happy man has been sought for long, but the seekers still delay to return. To what end shall we cut the cancer out of the body politic, if it sprout again in a more vital spot? If we could only reach the cancer germ!--But the germ is not found by the knife. There are more criminals than there ever have been heretofore. The jails are over-crowded; we must either build new ones, or transform those we have into castles of refuge to which good people may fly to escape the criminal nations outside; there will be no over-crowding then! Let worldly wisdom and enlightened selfishness retire, and listen for a while to believers--fanatics even. An act of faith: that is to say, first abolish jails, and then see what can be done with criminals! It is vain to beat about the bush; we must face the alternative. The syllogism runs thus: criminality is incompatible with true civilization--with a normal and secure society. Jails are a crime; society makes and warrants jails; therefore society is criminal. And the abolition of jails--repudiation both of the principle and of the concrete fact--is the only way to social redemption.