ained away by the fact that our great moral laws have been
forcibly adapted to the great laws of life and matter. There is more
beyond. We cannot refer all things, in all circumstances, to a simple
relation of cause and effect between crime and punishment. There is
often a moral element also; and though events have not placed it there,
though it is we alone who have created it, it is not the less powerful
and real. Of a physical justice, properly so called, we deny the
existence; but besides the wholly inward psychologic justice, to which
we shall soon refer, there is also a psychologic justice which is in
constant communication with the physical world; and it is this justice
that we attribute to we know not what invisible and universal
principle. And while it is wrong to credit Nature with moral
intentions, and to allow our actions to be governed by fear of
punishment or hope of reward that she may have in store for us, this
does not imply that, even materially, there is no reward for good, or
punishment for evil. Such reward and punishment undoubtedly exist, but
they issue not from whence we imagine; and in believing that they come
from an inaccessible spot, that they master us, judge us, and
consequently dispense us from judging ourselves, we commit the most
dangerous of errors; for none has a greater influence upon our manner
of defending ourselves against misfortune, or of setting forth to
attempt the legitimate conquest of happiness.

15

Such justice as we actually discover in Nature does not issue from her,
but from ourselves, who have unconsciously placed it there, through
becoming one with events, animating them and adapting them to our uses.
Accident, disease, the thunderbolt, which strike to right or to left,
without apparent reason or warning, wholly indifferent as to what our
thoughts may be, are not the only elements in our life. There are
other, and far more frequent, cases when we have direct influence on
the things and persons around us, and invest these with our own
personality; cases when the forces of nature become the instruments of
our thoughts, which, when unjust, will make improper use of them,
thereby calling forth retaliation and inviting punishment and disaster.
But in Nature there is no moral reaction; for this emanates from our
own thoughts or the thoughts of other men. It is not in things, but in
us, that the justice of things resides. It is our moral condition that
modifies o