I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason,
and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this
world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That
you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him;
that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in
respect of him; aim thitherward, with all your heart and all your
strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at
all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights
and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims
are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you
beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves
incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law
of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I
say it will be ill with you, and not well! If you love your
thief or murderer, if Nature and eternal Fact love him, then do
as you are now doing. But if Nature and Fact do _not_ love him?
If they have set inexorable penalties upon him, and planted
natural wrath against him in every god-created human
heart,--then I advise you, cease, and change your hand.

Reward and punishment? Alas, alas, I must say you reward and
punish pretty much alike! Your dignities, peerages, promotions,
your kingships, your brazen statues erected in capital and county
towns to our select demigods of your selecting, testify loudly
enough what kind of heroes and hero-worshippers you are. Woe to
the People that no longer venerates, as the emblem of God
himself, the aspect of Human Worth; that no longer knows what
human worth and unworth is! Sure as the Decrees of the Eternal,
that People cannot come to good. By a course too clear, by a
necessity too evident, that People will come into the hands of