God in the Dock

by C.S. Lewis

I call the act of taking a packet of cigarettes off a counter and slipping it into one’s pocket ‘purchase’ or ‘theft’ according as one does or does not pay for it. This does not mean that I consider the taking away of the goods as ‘subsidiary’ in an act of purchase. It means that what legitimises it, what makes it purchase at all, is the paying. I call the sexual act chaste or unchaste according as the parties are or are not married to one another. This does not mean that I consider it as ‘subsidiary’ to marriage, but that what legitimises it, what makes it a specimen of conjugal behaviour at all, is marriage. In the same way, I am ready to make both the protection of society and the ‘cure’ of the criminal as important as you please in punishment, but only on a certain condition: namely, that the initial act of thus interfering with a man’s liberty be justified on grounds of desert. Like payment in purchase, or marriage as regards the sexual act, it is this, and (I believe) this alone, which legitimises our proceeding and makes it an instance of punishment at all, instead of an instance of tyranny—or, perhaps, of war.