Preliminary Lemmas I–VIII

On the Eternity of Punishments

Second Commentary

The Judgment of Reason

On the Eternity of Punishments

The Judgment of Reason

Lemma I

1. By reason we understand that a twofold kind of punishment must be distinguished: privative and positive. The former consists in the deprivation of a good which would be due to the person, to the state, or to the condition, if nothing stood in the way. The latter includes a punition by which action is taken against the guilty person, by which the guilty person is punished and dealt with harshly. You have an example of privative punishment in exile, by which a citizen is deprived of the goods of his fatherland; but of positive punishment, in the blows which are inflicted upon one guilty of crimes.

Lemma II

2. Reason perceives that God can, and indeed ought, to sanction his law with punishments both privative and positive. Lest I heap up more considerations in a matter already ascertained, I shall note this one thing: those things which are attributed to human legislators cannot be denied to God. But there is no one who does not attribute to human legislators that they both can and ought to provide for the observance of their laws by adjoining punishments both privative and positive. Indeed, that which is asserted of human legislators must by a stronger right be asserted of God; and this is evident even from the fact that human sanction presupposes divine sanction, and not conversely.

Lemma III

3. Reason teaches that it pertains much more to legislators to take punitive action against the guilty and to protect their laws than it pertains to them to distribute rewards and, by rewards, to incite men to observe the laws.

Nor does reason teach this solely, or principally, on the ground that, whereas it belongs to the legislator alone to punish, the faculty of bestowing rewards belongs also to others; but especially on these grounds: I. that the injury inflicted upon the majesty of the ruler through violation of the law is greater than the obedience rendered to him when the law is observed; II. that the harm which threatens society from violated laws is graver than the benefit which comes to it from laws observed;

III. that it is of greater importance that citizens not be wicked than that they be excellent.

These and other considerations persuade us that it belongs more to the legislator to avert crimes by threatened punishments than to exhort men to distinguished works of virtue by the promise of rewards.

Lemma IV

4. Not all the crimes perpetrated by men are of the same gravity or nature. Some crimes are lesser, some greater, some greatest. But the penal sanction ought to correspond to the gravity and nature of the crimes. Unless this were so—if all crimes were punished by the same kind of penalty—the legislator could neither be judged equitable, nor would justice be observed in the distribution of punishments. Reason therefore demands that there be certain degrees in punishments, just as the gravity and nature of crimes is manifold and various.

Lemma V

5. There are two things especially which are considered in punishments: their force and intensity, and also their duration and extension. Therefore the proportion which must be observed between crime and punishment¹ regards at once both the force and intensity of the punishment and its duration and extension, so that, according to the variety of the crime, the intensity and extension of the punishment inflicted must likewise be various.

Lemma VI

6. They are greatly mistaken who think that the measure of the duration of a punishment must be sought from the more or less prolonged time which the guilty person spent in perpetrating the crime, or during which he persisted in the crime committed. This norm is inequitable and altogether absurd, as experience teaches and reason confirms. Experience teaches that a crime perpetrated in a very brief time is punished now by perpetual exile, now by perpetual imprisonment, and now by more prolonged torments.

Nor is this indeed surprising, since the norm according to which the intensity and extension of a punishment ought to be determined is not the mere lapse of time, but the gravity of the crime. This gravity arises: I. from the matter and object of the crime itself; II. from the tenor and form of the law by which the crime is forbidden; III. from the circumstances of the person who committed the crime; IV. from all the circumstances which accompany and, as it were, clothe the act round about.

Lemma VII

7. Nor must it be passed over that the dignity of the person who is injured contributes very greatly to increasing and amplifying the gravity of the crime. This is a persuasion of the whole human race, which has always both judged and declared by words and deeds the opinion preconceived in its mind: that one and the same injury assumes, according to the dignity of the person upon whom it is inflicted, certain degrees, as it were, of turpitude and malice, to which as many corresponding degrees of punishment ought in turn to answer. And manifest reason supports this persuasion. For the more dignified a person is, the more perfect a right he has to obedience; whence he cannot be injured without a more atrocious injury.

Lemma VIII

8. Hence it follows that an injury inflicted upon God is the greatest of all, since by it the most perfect right and the most perfect duty are violated. The most perfect right is violated because God, on account of the infinite excellence of his nature, has, so to speak, an infinite right to obedience.

The most perfect duty is violated because there is no creature which is not bound by the greatest obligation of all to render to God the supreme honor of which it is capable.