188. Does our criterion of the justice of punishment give any practical help in apportioning it?
189. The justice of punishment depends on the justice of the system of rights which it is to maintain
190. The idea that 'just' punishment is that which = the crime in amount confuses retribution for the wrong to society with compensation for damages to the individual
191. 'But why not hold that the pain of the punishment ought to = the moral guilt of the crime?'
192. Because the state cannot gauge either the one or the other; and if it could, it would have to punish every case differently
193. In truth the state has regard in punishing, not primarily to the individuals concerned, but to the future prevention of the crime by associating terror with it in the general imagination
194. The account taken of 'extenuating circumstances' may be similarly explained; i.e. the act done under them requires little terror to prevent it from becoming general
195 'But why avoid the simpler explanation, that extenuating circumstances are held to diminish the moral guilt of the act?'
196. Because (a) the state cannot ascertain the degree of moral guilt involved in a crime; (b) if it tries to punish immorality (proper), it will check disinterested moral effort
197. Punishment, however, may be truly held to express the 'moral disapprobation' of society, but it is to the external side of action that the disapprobation is directed