which civil society again needs for its maintenance the power to make
laws, to sit in judgment on transgressors, and in extreme cases, as we
have proved, having tried them and found them guilty, to take away
even their lives, to the common terror and horror of the crime. God,
who wills human nature to be, wills it to be on the terms on which
alone it can be. To that end He has handed over to the civil ruler so
much of His own divine power of judgment, as shall enable His human
delegate to govern with assurance and effect. That means the right of
the sword.

8. It may be objected that to kill any man is to treat him as a
_thing_, not a person, as an _heterocentric_, not an _autocentric_
being, which is a proceeding essentially unnatural and wrong, (c. ii.,
s. i., n. 2, p. 203.) St. Thomas's answer here is peculiarly valuable:

"Man by sinning withdraws from the order of reason, and thereby falls
from human dignity, so far as that consists in man being naturally
free and existent for his own sake [autocentric]; and falls in a
manner into the state of servitude proper to beasts, according to that
of the Psalm (xlviii. 15): _Man when he was in honour did not
understand: he hath matched himself with senseless beasts and become
like unto them_; and Proverbs xi. 29: _The fool shall serve the wise_.
And therefore, though to kill a man, while he abides in his native
dignity, be a thing of itself evil, yet to kill a man who is a sinner
may be good, as to kill a beast. For worse is an evil man than a
beast, and more noxious, as the Philosopher says." (2a 2a, q. 64, art.
2, ad 3.)

Hence observe:--(1) That a Utilitarian who denies free will, as many
of that school do, stands at some loss whence to show cause why even