th things done or left undone, things
said or left unsaid; it does not enter the domain of thought.
Consequently, just as an accident does not entail the necessity of
repairing the injury that another sustains, neither does the deliberate
thought or desire to perpetrate an injustice entail such a consequence.
Even if a person does all in his power to effect an evil purpose, and
fails, he is not held to reparation, for there is nothing to repair. As
we have said more than once, the will is the source of all malice in
the sight of God; but injustice to man requires material as well as
formal malice; sin must have its complement of exterior deed before it
can be called human injustice.

We deem it unnecessary to dwell upon the gravity of the obligation to
make restitution. The balance of justice must be maintained exact and
impartial in this world, or the Almighty will see that it is done in
the next. The idea that God does not stand for justice destroys the
idea that God exists. And if the precept not to commit injustice leaves
the guilty one free to repair or not to repair, that precept is
self-contradictory and has no meaning at all. If a right is a right, it
is not extinguished by being violated and if justice, is something more
than a mere sound, it must protect all rights whether sinned against or
not.

It might be convenient for some people to force upon their conscience
the lie that restitution is of counsel rather than of precept, under
the plea that it is enough to shoulder the responsibility of sin
without being burdened with the obligation of repairing it, but it is
only a soul well steeped in malice that will take seriously such a
contention. Neither is restitution a penance imposed upon us in order
to atone for our faults; it is no more penitential in its nature than
are the efforts we make to avoid the faults we have fallen into in the
past. It atones for nothing; it is simply a desisting from evil. When
this is done and forgiveness obtained, then, and not till then, is it
time to think of satisfying for the temporal punishment due to sin.

Naturally it is much more easy to abstain from committing injustice
than to repair it after it is done. It is often very difficult and very
painful to face the consequences of our evil ways, especially when all
satisfaction is gone and nothing remains but the hard exigencies of
duty. And duty is a thing that it costs very little to shirk when one
is already hardened by