Was sent this famous essay by C.S. Lewis on the need for punishment to be thought of retribution - if it is thought of as cure it diminishes the personhood of the perpetrator and is open to horrific abuse by the "silky tongued" therapists; if it is thought of as deterrent then the guilt or innocence of the perpetrator is of less importance, they are punished as an example to others.

Behind all this (like a vast mountain on whose side this argument is built) is that we live in a moral universe, that there is such a thing as natural law, and that it was placed here by God.  Speaking of mountains, a great quote from the end of the article on the relationship between love and mercy.

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.

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