Rudolph captures this criminal. He wants to reform him critically and set him up as an example for the world of law. He quarrels with the world of law not over punishment itself, but over kinds and methods of punishment. He invents, as the Negro doctor David aptly expresses it, a penal theory which would be worthy of the greatest German criminal expert , and which has since had the good fortune to be defended by a German criminal expert with German earnestness and German thoroughness. Rudolph has not the slightest idea that one can rise above criminal experts: his ambition is to be the greatest criminal expert , primus inter pares [first among equals]. He has the ma tre d' cole blinded by the Negro doctor David. At first Rudolph repeats all the trivial objections to capital punishment: that it has no effect on the criminal and no effect on the people, for whom it seems to be an entertaining spectacle. Further Rudolph establishes a difference between the ma tre d' cole and the soul of the ma tre d' cole. It is not the man, not the real ma tre d' cole whom he wishes to save; he wants the spiritual salvation of his soul. What Rudolph, the man of pure Criticism, objects to in profane criminal justice is the too swift transition from the court to the scaffold. He, on the other hand, wants to link vengeance on the criminal with penance and consciousness of sin in the criminal, corporal punishment with spiritual punishment, sensuous torture with the non-sensuous torture of remorse. Profane punishment must at the same time be a means of Christian moral education, This penal theory, which links jurisprudence with theology, this revealed mystery of the mystery , is no other than the penal theory of the Catholic Church, as already expounded at length by Bentham in his work Punishments and Rewards [Th orie des peines et des r compenses] In that book Bentham also proved the moral futility of the punishments of today. He calls legal penalties legal parodies . The punishment that Rudolph imposed on the ma tre d' cole is the same as that which Origen imposed on himself. He emasculates him, robs him of a productive organ, the eye. The eye is the light of the body. [New Testament, Matthew, 6:22] It does great credit to Rudolph s religious instinct that he should hit, of all things, upon the idea of blinding. This punishment was current in the thoroughly Christian empire of Byzantium and came to full flower in the vigorous youthful period of the Christian-Germanic states of England and France. Cutting man off from the perceptible outer world, throwing him back into his abstract inner nature in order to correct him blinding is a necessary consequence of the Christian doctrine according to which the consummation of this cutting off, the pure isolation of man in his spiritualistic ego , is good itself. If Rudolph does not shut the ma tre d' cole up in a real monastery, as was the case in Byzantium and in Franconia, he at least shuts him up in an ideal monastery, in the cloister of an impenetrable night which the light of the outer world cannot pierce, the cloister of an idle conscience and consciousness of sin filled with nothing but the phantoms of memory. A certain speculative bashfulness prevents Herr Szeliga from discussing openly the penal theory of his hero Rudolph that worldly punishment must be linked with Christian repentance and atonement. Instead he imputes to him naturally as a mystery which is only just being revealed to the world the theory that punishment must make the criminal the judge of his own crime. The mystery of this revealed mystery is Hegel s penal theory. According to Hegel, the criminal in his punishment passes sentence on himself. Gans developed this theory at greater length. In Hegel this is the speculative disguise of the old jus talionis [the right of retaliation-an eye for an eye], which Kant expounded as the only juridical penal theory. For Hegel, self-judgment of the criminal remains a mere Idea , a mere speculative interpretation of the current empirical punishments for criminals. He thus leaves the mode of application to the respective stage of development of the state, i.e., he leaves punishment as it is. Precisely in that he shows himself more critical than his Critical echo. A penal theory which at the same time sees in the criminal the man can do so only in abstraction, in imagination, precisely because punishment, coercion, is contrary to human conduct. Moreover, this would be impossible to carry out. Purely subjective arbitrariness would take the place of the abstract law because it would always depend on the official, honourable and decent men to adapt the penalty to the individuality of the criminal. Plato long ago realised that the law must be one-sided and take no account of the individual. On the other hand, under human conditions punishment will really be nothing but the sentence passed by the culprit on himself. No one will want to convince him that violence from without, done to him by others, is violence which he had done to himself. On the contrary, he will see in other men his natural saviours from the punishment which he has imposed on himself; in other words, the relation will be reversed. Rudolph expresses his innermost thought the purpose of blinding the ma tre d' cole when he says to him: This is, of course, the way in which all reality emerges simply out of pure Criticism , namely, as a distortion and senseless abstraction of reality. The first result of Rudolph s Criticism is this spontaneous prayer. It is followed immediately by an involuntary atonement at Bouqueval farm, where the ghosts of those whom the ma tre d' cole murdered appear to him in a dream. His first words are a frank expression of his desire for vengeance. He wants to give torture for torture. He wants to murder Chouette and he wants to prolong her agony by a long sermon. And delightful sophistry!-the speech with which he tortures her is a sermon on morals. He asserts that his dream at Bouqueval has improved him. At the same time he reveals the real effect of the dream by admitting that it almost drove him mad and that it will actually do so. He gives as a proof of his reform that he prevented Fleur de Marie from being tortured. Eug ne Sue s personages -earlier Chourineur and now the ma tre d' cole must express, as the result of their thoughts, as the conscious. motive of their actions, his own intention as a writer, which causes him to make them behave in a certain way and no other. They must continually say: I have reformed myself in this, in that, etc. Since their life has no real content, their words must give vigorous tones to insignificant features like the protection of Fleur de Marie. Having reported the salutary effect of his Bouqueval dream, the ma tre d' cole must explain why Eug ne Sue had him locked up in a cellar. He must find the novelist s procedure reasonable. He must say to Chouette: by locking me up in a cellar, causing me to be gnawed by rats and to suffer hunger and thirst, you have completed my reform. Solitude has Purified me. The beastly roar, the wild fury, the terrible lust for vengeance with which the ma tre d' cole welcomes Chouette are in complete contradiction to this moralising talk. They betray what kind of thoughts occupied him in his dungeon. The ma tre d' cole himself seems to realise this, but being a Critical moralist, he will know how to reconcile the contradictions. He declares that the infinite joy of having Chouette in his power is precisely a sign of his reform, for his lust for vengeance is not a natural one but a moral one. He wants to avenge, not himself, but the common victims of Chouette and himself. If he murders her, he does not commit murder, he fulfils a duty. He does not avenge himself on her, he punishes his accomplice like an impartial judge. He shudders at his past murders and, nevertheless, marvelling at his own casuistry, he asks Chouette: Don t you find it strange? Without fear and quite calmly I am going to kill you. On moral grounds that he does not reveal, he gloats at the same time over the picture of the murder that he is going to commit, as being terrible murder ... murder with terrible refinements. It is in accord with the character of the ma tre d' cole that he should murder Chouette, especially after the cruelty with which she treated him. But that he should commit murder on moral grounds, that he should give a moral interpretation to his savage pleasure in the terrible murder and the terrible refinements that he should show his remorse for the past murders precisely by committing a fresh one, that from a simple murderer he should become a murderer in a double sense, a moral murderer all this is the glorious result of Rudolph s Critical cure. Chouette tries to get away from the ma tre d' cole. He notices it and holds her fast. The ma tre d' cole describes correctly the condition to which isolation from the outer world reduces a man. For one to whom the sensuously perceptible world becomes a mere idea, for him mere ideas are transformed into sensuously perceptible beings. The figments of his brain assume corporeal form. A world of tangible, palpable ghosts is begotten within his mind. That is the secret of all pious visions and at the same time it is the general form of insanity. When the ma tre d' cole repeats Rudolph s words about the power of repentance and atonement linked with terrible torments , he does so in a state of semi-madness, thus proving in fact the connection between Christian consciousness of sin and insanity. Similarly, when the ma tre d' cole considers the transformation of life into a night of dream filled with ghosts as the real result of repentance and atonement, he is expressing the true mystery of pure Criticism and of Christian reform, which consists in changing man into a ghost and his life into a life of dream. But Eug ne Sue has not yet consummated the repentance and atonement linked with a terrible revenge . The ma tre d' cole recovers his reason, but fearing to be delivered to justice he remains in Bic tre and pretends to be mad. Monsieur Sue forgets that every word he said was to be a prayer , whereas finally it is much more like the inarticulate howling and raving of a madman. Or does Monsieur Sue perhaps ironically put these manifestations of life on the same level as praying? Monsieur Sue shares the opinion of the worthy people who explain the spread of crime by the organisation of prisons. To remove the criminal from bad society he is left to his own society. Had Messieurs Tocqueville and Beaumont studied Eug ne Sue s novel thoroughly they would certainly have secured complete and absolute application of solitary confinement. The pupil is white after the operation, so it is a case of cataract of the crystalline lens. So far, this could, of course, he caused by injury to the envelope of the lens without causing much pain, though not entirely without pain. But as doctors achieve this result only by natural, not by Critical means, the only resort was to wait until inflammation set in after the injury and the exudation dimmed the lens. A still greater miracle and greater mystery befall the ma tre d' cole in the third chapter of the third book. It could be considered as a new revelation that Eug ne Sue makes rewards derive from the judiciary from a new appendix to the Penal Code and not satisfied with one jurisdiction he invents a second. Unfortunately this revealed mystery, too, is the repetition of an old theory expounded in detail by Bentham in his work already mentioned [Th orie des peines et des r compenses]. On the other hand, we cannot deny Monsieur Eug ne Sue the honour of having motivated and developed Bentham s suggestion in an incomparably more Critical way than the latter. Whereas the mass-type Englishman keeps his feet on the ground, Sue s deduction rises to the Critical region of the heavens. His argument is as follows: In depicting his Critical rewarding justice, Monsieur Sue gives an example of the feminine dogmatism that must have a formula and forms it according to the categories of what exists , dogmatism which was censured with all the tranquillity of knowledge by Herr Edgar in Flora Tristan. For each point of the present penal code, which he retains, Monsieur Sue projects the addition of a counterpart in a reward code copied from it to the last detail. For easier survey we shall give his description of the complementary pairs in tabular form: Name: Criminal Justice Description: holds in its hand a sword to shorten the wicked by a head. Purpose: Punishment of the wicked imprisonment, infamy, deprivation of life. The people is notified of the terrible chastisements for the wicked. Means of discovering the wicked: Police spying, mouchards, to keep watch over the wicked. Method of ascertaining whether someone is wicked: Les assists du crime, criminal assizes. The public ministry points out and indicts the crimes of the accused for public vengeance. Condition of the criminal after sentence: Under surveillance de la haute police. Is fed in prison. The state defrays expenses. Execution: The criminal stands on the scaffold. Name: Virtuous Justice Description: holds in its hand a crown to raise the good by a head. Purpose: Reward of the good, free board, honour, maintenance of life. The people is notified of the brilliant triumphs for the good. Means of discovering the Good: Espionnage de vertu, mouchards to keep watch over the virtuous. Method of ascertaining whether someone is good: Assises de la vertu, virtue assizes. The public ministry points out and proclaims the noble deeds of the accused for public recognition. Condition of the virtuous after sentence: Under surveillance de la haute charit morale. Is fed at home. The state defrays expenses. Execution: Immediately opposite the scaffold of the criminal a pedestal is erected on which the grand homme de bien stands. A pillory of virtue. As far as spying on virtue and the supervision of supreme moral charity are concerned, they were organised long ago by the Jesuits. Moreover, the Journal des D bats, Si cle, Petites affiches de Paris, etc., point out and proclaim the virtues, noble acts and merits of all the Paris stockjobbers daily and at cost price not counting the pointing out and proclamation of political noble acts, for which each party has its own organ. Old Voss remarked long ago that Homer is better than his gods. The revealed mystery of all mysteries , Rudolph, can therefore be made responsible for Eug ne Sue s ideas. Monsieur Sue abolishes rightlessness in the state by reforming the section of the Code p nal on confidence tricks, and especially by the institution of paid lawyers for the poor. He finds that in Piedmont, Holland, etc., where there are lawyers for the poor, rightlessness in the state has been abolished. The only failing of French legislation is that it does not provide for payment of lawyers for the poor, has no lawyers restricted to serving the poor, and makes the legal limits of poverty too narrow. As if rightlessness did not begin in the very lawsuit itself, and as if it had not already been known for a long time in France that the law gives nothing, but only sanctions what exists. The already trivial differentiation between droit and fait seems still to be a myst re de Paris for the Critical novelist. If we add to the Critical revelation of the mysteries of law the great reforms which Eug ne Sue wants to institute in respect of huissiers [bailiffs], we shall understand the Paris Journal Satan. There we see the residents of a district in the city write to the grand r formateur tant la ligne [great reformer at so much a line], that there is no gaslight yet in their streets. Monsieur Sue replies that he will deal with this shortcoming in the sixth volume of his Wandering Jew. Another part of the city complains of the shortcomings of preliminary education. He promises a preliminary education reform for that district of the city in the tenth volume of the Wandering Jew.
The Holy Family Chapter VIII