=16. The superior sanction: the future life.=--These various sanctions being insufficient to satisfy our want of justice, there is required still another, namely, the _superior religious_ sanction. It is a well-known fact that virtue is not a sufficient shield to protect us against the blows of adversity, and that immorality does not necessarily condemn one to misery and grief. It is evident that a man corrupt and wicked may be born with all the advantages of genius, fortune, health; and that an honest man may have inherited none of these. There is in this neither injustice nor blind chance; but it proves that the harmony between moral good and happiness is not of this world. In regard to the pleasures and pains of conscience, it is also evident that they are not sufficient. In fact, the pleasures of the senses may divert and deaden the pangs of remorse; and it must also be said, though it be still more sad, that it sometimes happens that a merciless continuance of misfortune deadens in an honest soul the delight in virtue; and the painful efforts which virtue costs may finally obliterate in a man, tired of life, the calm and sweet enjoyment which it naturally brings with it. If such is the disproportion and disagreement between the inner pleasures and pains, and the moral merit of him who experiences them, what shall we say of that wholly outward sanction which consists in the rewards and punishments distributed by the unequal justice of man? I do not speak of legal pains alone; it is well known that they often fall upon the innocent, and are spared to the guilty; that they are almost always disproportioned: the law punishing the crime, without taking note of the exact moral value of the action; but I speak also of the pains and rewards of public opinion, esteem, and contempt. Are these always in an exact proportion to merit? From all these observations it results that the law of harmony between good and happiness is not of this world; that there is always disagreement, or at least disproportion, between moral merit and the pleasures of the senses. Hence the necessity of a superior sanction, the means and time of which are in the hand of God.