452 THE WORLD AS WILL. bk. iv.
every place they left And besides, the strife of individuals is never completely abolished by the state, for it vexes in trifles when it is prohibited in greater things. Finally, Eris, happily expelled from within, turns to what is without; as the conflict of individuals, she is banished by the institution of the state; but she reappears from without as the war of nations, and now demands in bulk and at once, as an accumulated debt, the bloody sacrifice which by wise precautions has been denied her in the particular. And even supposing that all this were finally overcome and removed, by wisdom founded on the experience of thousands of years, at the end the result would be the actual over-population of the whole planet, the terrible evil of which only a bold imagination can now realise.[1]
§63. We have recognised temporal justice, which has its seat in the state, as requiting and punishing, and have seen that this only becomes justice through a reference to the future. For without this reference all punishing and requiting would be an outrage without justification, and indeed merely the addition of another evil to that which has already occurred, without meaning or significance. But it is quite otherwise with eternal justice, which was referred to before, and which rules not the state but the world, is not dependent upon human institutions, is not subject to chance and deception, is not uncertain, wavering, and erring, but infallible, fixed, and sure. The conception of requital implies that of time; therefore eternal justice cannot be requital. Thus it cannot, like temporal justice, admit of respite and delay, and require time in order to triumph, equalising the evil deed by the evil consequences only by means of time. The punishment must here be so bound up with the offence that both are one.
- ↑ Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement.
