by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts
its balance in all parts of life. Hoi kuboi Dios aei
eupiptousi,--The dice of God are always loaded. The world
looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation,
which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what
figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still
returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished,
every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and
certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity
by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see
smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you
know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind.

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates
itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in
real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in
apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution.
The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the
soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the
understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is
often spread over a long time and so does not become
distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may
follow late after the offence, but they follow because
they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one
stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within
the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and
effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed;
for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end
preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.