n though it
should serve neither for amendment nor for example. So do men with reason
demand that true gratitude should come from a true recognition of the past
benefit, and not from the interested aim of extorting a fresh benefit. This
objection contains noble and sound considerations, but it does not strike
at me. I require a man to be virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the
motive of interest, of hope or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he
should find in good actions: else one has not yet reached the degree of
virtue that one must endeavour to attain. That is what one means by saying
that justice and virtue must be loved for their own sake; and it is also
what I explained in justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the
opening of the controversy which caused so much stir. Likewise I consider
that wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as
when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because
he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing
them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree of
wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it
finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than
he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. I have
also observed in answering the difficulties of M. Bayle that, according to
the celebrated Conringius, justice which punishes by means of _medicinal_
penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at
least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those
who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. True [423]
retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes
something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because
the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of
suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil
whereto it has consented. Mr. Hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has
rejected retributive justice, as do the Socinians, drawing on themselves
the condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the Socinian
party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom.

18. Sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for
felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good and
evil. But this objection seems to me c