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A Possible Future.—Is it impossible for us to imagine a social state in which the criminal will publicly denounce himself and dictate his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law which he himself has made, that he is exercising his power, the power of a lawmaker, in thus punishing himself? He may offend for once, but by his own voluntary punishment he raises himself above his offence, and not only expiates it by his frankness, greatness, and calmness, but adds to it a public benefit.—Such would be the criminal of a possible future, a criminal who would, it is true, presuppose a future legislation based upon this fundamental idea: “I yield in great things as well as in small only to the law which I myself have made.” How many experiments must yet be made! How many futures have yet to dawn upon mankind!
A Possible Future.—Is it impossible for us to imagine a social state in which the criminal will publicly denounce himself and dictate his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law which he himself has made, that he is exercising his power, the power of a lawmaker, in thus punishing himself? He may offend for once, but by his own voluntary punishment he raises himself above his offence, and not only expiates it by his frankness, greatness, and calmness, but adds to it a public benefit.—Such would be the criminal of a possible future, a criminal who would, it is true, presuppose a future legislation based upon this fundamental idea: “I yield in great things as well as in small only to the law which I myself have made.” How many experiments must yet be made! How many futures have yet to dawn upon mankind!
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Dawn of Day (1911 English edition) (1911 AD)
The Dawn of Day, complete printed unit 187; John McFarland Kennedy translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1911
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Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.
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