The violations of natural law are punished without any reference to the question whether the evil-doer intended the wrong, or whether he sinned in ignorance, or whether this ignorance was involuntary and unavoidable. The question of the justice or injustice of such natural penalties involves the great question of the right and wrong of the system of the universe. Is it just and right for the Creator to make a system in which all free agents shall be thus led to obedience to its laws by penalties as well as rewards, by fear as well as by hope? This question will not be discussed here. Most discussions as to _just_ rewards and penalties ordinarily relate to the _added_ penalties by which parents, teachers, and magistrates enforce obedience to natural or to statute law. In these questions reference is always had to the _probable results_ of such rewards and penalties in securing obedience. If experience has shown that certain penalties do secure obedience to wise and good laws, either of nature or of human enactment, then they are considered just. If they do not, they are counted unwise and unjust. So, if certain penalties are needlessly severe--that is to say, if a less penalty will secure equal obedience, then this also decides so severe a penalty to be unjust. In deciding on the rectitude of the penalties of human enactments, it is always assumed to be unjust to punish for any lack of knowledge and obedience when the subject had _no power_ to know and to obey. If _a choice to obey_ will not secure the act required of a free agent, then a penalty inflicted for disobedience is always regarded as unjust. The only seeming exception to this is the case where a person, by voluntary means, has deprived himself of ability to obey. But in such cases the punishment is felt to be right, not because he does not obey when he has no power, but because he has voluntarily deprived himself of this power. And he is punished for destroying his ability to obey, and not for violating the law. These things in human laws, then, are always demanded to make a penalty appear _just_ to the moral sense of mankind, namely, that the subject have power to obey, and that he has opportunity to know the law, and is not ignorant by any voluntary and improper neglect. In all questions of justice, therefore, it is important to discriminate between those penalties that are inherent as a part of the great system of the universe, and for which the Creator alone is the responsible cause, and those which result from voluntary institutions of which men are the authors.