ABSTRACT
Though there is a considerable overlapping of the criteria for awarding blame and punishment, the case of motive seems to indicate that they are not necessarily identical. The wide area of coincidence seems nevertheless to demand explanation. Morality, like law, is a system of rules for guiding behaviour, and blame is to the one what punishment is to the other. Many rules supported by blame (including self-blame, or remorse) appear also as legal rules upheld by punishments; for the ends of moral guidance are largely similar to those of legal control. But qualities of character, and therefore the motives for actions, count for more in moral than in legal judgments; for morality operates not merely by prescribing or prohibiting certain classes of action, but also by training character (and therefore conduct in general) by praise and blame of 'the whole man'. We blame men for being bad-tempered; we punish only for assault. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are nevertheless closely analogous, and since their functions are broadly alike, it is not surprising that the criteria for allocating them should largely correspond. But because we usually blame the criminal we punish, it does not follow that we therefore do, or ought to, punish
the same class as a brutal murder for profit, and we may feel justified in tolerating a few examples rather than inflict the maximum penalty on this type of offender.
