ose whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the
human kind and destroyers of their communities. It is incontestable that
their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of
legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (Apply here
these words of Pliny the Younger, _Epist._, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae
quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere
solebat, Qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the
laws of Draco, an Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with
ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme
penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it
must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I [205]
once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion
existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is
no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of
the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later. As
for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater
among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the
possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber
those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who punishes only
the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of
no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince and the general to
pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. God only pardons
those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more
consistent with perfect justice. But if anyone asks why God gives not to
all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having
no relation to the present maxim. I have already answered it in a sense,
not in order to find God's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such,
and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know
that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the
sword, to inspire terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war
or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of
it: there is no decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked
of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the
inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. Yet an