“For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.””

—  Georg Brandes

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 38-39

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Georg Brandes40
Danish literature critic and scholar 1842–1927

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