“Thou shalt not Kill!”

One of the greatest defects in the public morals of the United States (leaving the less progressed countries out of consideration) is the nonrecognition of the sacredness of life and the tolerance of that antiquated custom of capital punishment, a remnant of the dark ages, during which vengeance was regarded as justice, and where it was supposed that God was so helpless and impotent that fallible mortals and sinners had to administer his justice, he himself being incapable to punish the transgressors of his laws. Especially detestable is the mode in which executions take place in New York, for there the universal life-giving power of electricity is prostituted to the vile purpose of destroying the life of fellow-beings, to say nothing about the frequently occurring cases when the death-dealing machinery is out of gear and the criminal or perhaps insane person, is put to an unjust torture, not provided by the “law,” and burnt alive before the electric current kills him. And all this is still more horrible and objectionable, if the victim is afterwards found to be innocent, as was the case with the supposed murderer William Bloch, which was a legal murder caused by mistaken identity.

 The worshipers of capital punishment and legal revenge bring forth three excuses for continuing this barbarous custom; namely:

 1. The necessity of complying with the demands of justice.

 2. The convenience of rendering the culprit incapable of doing future harm and thus protect the public.

 3. To frighten evilly inclined persons from committing similar deeds.

 All these three pretexts are illusive and based upon false conceptions and ignorance of natural laws, as will be clear to every metaphysician.

 I. Legal enactments and divine justice are two different things and not always in harmony with each other. God makes no legal enactments, his justice is unfailing and the result of the action of eternal law; legal enactments are made by shortsighted human beings and the result of the real or imaginary requirements of the times. Those who know how elections are made, will realize that our legislators are not all sages and saints and not in possession of divine prerogatives. If a man or a body of persons arrogate to themselves the power to decide about the question of whether a human being is to live or to die; they commit the crime of blasphemy and take upon themselves a correspondingly heavy responsibility.

 Seen from a true religious point of view capital punishment is nonsensical; because a murder cannot be remedied by committing another murder, be it legal or not. Moreover the Christian Religion teaches that we should not kill, and it makes no exceptions in regard to criminal or insane persons. It says that God does not wish the death of the sinner; but his conversion, and by executing a criminal we act contrary to this command and commit the greatest act of injustice, depriving the culprit of his life and of the opportunity to change his character and become a wiser and better man. Moreover the law of Christianity is love and charity, and how can those who believe in eternal hell and damnation be called “Christians,” if they act so contrary to the law of charity that they advocate the system of sending criminals to a place of torture from which no redemption is possible? “Mine is the retribution, says the Lord.” So teaches the Bible, and a Christian has no right to usurp the prerogative which God claims as his own.

 Seen from the point of view of the materialist who believes neither in a life after the death of the physical body nor in purgatory or hell, the idea of “capital punishment” being a punishment must necessarily appear nonsensical. To him it will be merely a cessation of suffering and more preferable than a life of misery in a dungeon. The only thing that might be considered a punishment in such a case would be the fear of death before the execution. But, supposing that the condemned criminal has no fear of death; capital punishment will be to him nothing to be dreaded. If one is a disbeliever in a state after death, any idea of post mortem punishment does not enter into consideration.

 II. There is no doubt that the public has a right to protect itself against criminals and maniacs; but our modern civilization is sufficiently provided with fortresses, dungeons, workhouses and prisons of all kinds, to take good care of dangerous persons and prevent their escape, without the necessity of killing them.

 But now the question arises, whether the killing of an evil-inclined person does actually render him harmless, and this the metaphysician denies. If a murder is committed, it is not the body of the murderer that instigated the killing. The body is merely the instrument of the real culprit, the inner man or the “soul” and the soul cannot be executed. The legal executioner or sheriff, together with the attending physicians, etc., appear in such a case to be playing the role of a dog which furiously snaps at the stick with which he has been beaten, imagining thereby to destroy the beater himself. Even a superficial acquaintance with the constitution of man in his aspect as an ensouled being goes to show that the power which lifted the arm of the murderer and caused the killing, namely his will and thought, cannot be destroyed. Ideas cannot be killed and the instincts or will-force which executes these ideas or seeks to execute them survives after the death of the physical form. Not only does an evil thought not die when the body dies; but it becomes more free in its action after such an event and is then no longer restricted or guided by reason. It becomes a blind force, a current of thought capable to enter any sensitive organism and thus to obsess and induce other persons to commit a similar crime. In this way instead of only one instrument, it may now find several instruments for carrying out its purpose, as has often enough been observed, when after some criminal had been executed for some peculiar crime, numerous other crimes of a similar nature occurred. There have been in fact whole epidemics of crimes, caused in this manner by psychic infection.

 III. This argument hardly deserves any notice; because it is well known that neither public executions nor the accounts which are published thereof ever prevented other criminals or insane persons from committing similar crimes. On the contrary, such scenes harden the heart, and descriptions of them are liable to demoralize the people. They make them familiar with bloodshed and on the whole, criminal stories often serve as practical instructions to evil-inclined persons how to evade the law. Moreover everybody knows that no criminal has ever been punished unless he has been caught. The punishment may therefore be considered as a consequence of having been so stupid as to allow oneself to be caught, and it is reasonable to suppose that everyone committing a crime does so in the hope of not being detected.

 Concerning the disadvantages resulting from capital punishment; they are of two kinds, namely such as are suffered by the soul of the executed person and such as concern the people.

 The consequences resulting to the soul of the criminal will differ according to the conditions in which he enters the astral world. If he was innocent or insane, his condition will differ very much from that of one who leaves this world full of passion or fear and filled with thoughts of revenge for the injustice done to him. To examine these different post mortem states would take us too deep into the mysteries of occult science.

 The consequences to the public are also more or less deplorable, according to the nature of the case. Cold blooded killing, even if legalized by law, is a worse crime than a murder committed in the heat of passion, and as according to the law of divine justice the consequences of every evil deed fall upon its originator; these consequences consist in creating impurities in the spiritual atmosphere of the country, which produce moral and even physical diseases, to say nothing about the horrid elementals, vampires and ghouls which are attracted by the emanations of human blood and which feeding thereon grow in strength to the detriment of sensitive persons, causing hysterics, epilepsy, obsession, etc., etc.

 Furthermore it is proved by experience that cases in which innocent persons are convicted and executed are by no means very rare and if such a person has been legally murdered he cannot be brought back to life again. In certain countries, for instance Persia, castration or the loss of some member, often takes the place of capital punishment and this procedure appears more reasonable than the other method.

 To imprison criminals in solitary dungeons, where they are left to their own imagination until they become insane, is equally nonsensical. It would be better for them and perhaps for all, if they were killed immediately; for the criminal in his solitary den, having nothing to divert his mind from his thoughts of revenge, evolves evil thoughts which attract corresponding evil influences from the astral plane, and they gaining in power thereby, again exert an injurious influence upon others.

 A great deal might also be said about the demoralizing influence of prisons where persons of all classes and kinds are put together and compelled to perform some soul-killing labor.

 Crime is a disease closely related to insanity, and ought to be treated as such. Even for the worse criminals a properly conducted insane asylum, guarded against possible escape, would be the proper place for effecting a cure; but for the purpose of introducing such reforms all thoughts of revenge or “punishment” would have to be abandoned and we would have to realize that the object in treating with criminals is not retribution and retaliation, but education and improvement of character. The greatest obstacles in the way of these useful reforms are the ignorance of the constitution of human nature, old inherited prejudices, bigotry, the vain glorification of self and the want of a truly christian or theosophical spirit.