juridical punishment can never be
administered merely as a means for promoting another good either
with regard to the criminal himself or to civil society, but must in
all cases be imposed only because the individual on whom it is
inflicted has committed a crime. For one man ought never to be dealt
with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another, nor be
mixed up with the subjects of real right. Against such treatment his
inborn personality has a right to protect him, even although he may be
condemned to lose his civil personality. He must first be found guilty
and punishable, before there can be any thought of drawing from his
punishment any benefit for himself or his fellow-citizens. The penal
law is a categorical imperative; and woe to him who creeps through the
serpent-windings of utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may
discharge him from the justice of punishment, or even from the due
measure of it, according to the Pharisaic maxim: "It is better that
one man should die than that the whole people should perish." For if
justice and righteousness perish, human life would no longer have
any value in the world. What, then, is to be said of such a proposal
as to keep a criminal alive who has been condemned to death, on his
being given to understand that, if he agreed to certain dangerous
experiments being performed upon him, he would be allowed to survive
if he came happily through them? It is argued that physicians might
thus obtain new information that would be of value to the
commonweal.
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