A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (1735)/Chapter 5
Fifth argument taken from the nature and use of rewards and punishments in societyV. A fifth argument to prove man a necessary agent, is as follows: If man was not a necessary agent, determin’d by pleasure and pain, there would be no foundation for rewards and punishments, which are the[1] essential supports of society.
For if men were not necessarily determin’d by pleasure and pain, or if pleasure and pain were no causes to determine mens wills; of what use would be the prospect of rewards to frame a man’s will to the observation of the law, or punishments to hinder his transgression thereof? Were pain, as such, eligible, and pleasure, as such, avoidable; rewards and punishments could be no motives to a man, to make him do or forbear any action. But if pleasure and pain have a necessary effect on men, and if it be impossible for men not to chuse what seems good to them, and not to a void what seems evil; the necessity of rewards and punishments is then evident, and rewards will be of use to all those who conceive those rewards to be pleasure, and punishments will be of use to all those who conceive them to be pain: and rewards and punishments will frame those mens wills to observe, and not transgress the laws.
Besides, since there are so many robbers, murderers, whoremasters, and other criminals, who notwithstanding the punishments threatn’d, and rewards promis’d, by laws; prefer breaking the laws as the greater good or lesser evil, and reject conformity to them as the greater evil or lesser good: how many more would there be, and with what disorders would not all societies be fill’d, if rewards and punishments, consider’d as pleasure and pain, did not determine some mens wills, but that, instead thereof, all men could prefer or will, punishment consider’d as pain, and reject rewards consider’d as pleasure? men would then be under no restraints.
- ↑ Solon rempublicam contineri dicebat duabus rebus, præmio & pœnâ. Cicero Epist. 15. ad Brutum.