Hence, if life is our legitimate aim—if absolute morality means, as it does, conformity to the laws of complete life; then absolute morality warrants the restraint of those who force their fellow-citizens into non-conformity. Our justification is, that life is impossible save under certain conditions; that it cannot be entire unless these conditions are maintained unbroken; and that if it is right for us to live completely, it is right for us to remove any one who either breaks these conditions in our persons or constrains us to break them. Such being the basis of our right to coerce the criminal, {166} there next come the questions:—What is the legitimate extent of the coercion? Can we from this source derive authority for certain demands on him? and are there any similarly-derived limits to such demands? To both these questions there are affirmative answers. First, we find authority for demanding restitution or compensation. Conformity to the laws of life being the substance of absolute morality; and the social regulations which absolute morality dictates, being those which make this conformity possible; it is a manifest corollary that whoever breaks these regulations, may be justly required to undo, as far as possible, the wrong he has done. The object being to maintain the conditions essential to complete life, it follows that, when one of these conditions has been transgressed, the first thing to be required of the transgressor is, that he shall put matters as nearly as may be in the state they previously were. The property stolen shall be restored, or an equivalent for it given. Any one injured by an assault shall have his surgeon’s bill paid, compensation for lost time, and also for the suffering he has borne. And similarly in all cases of infringed rights. Second, we are warranted by this highest authority in restricting the actions of the offender as much as is needful to prevent further aggressions. Any citizen who will not allow others to fulfil the conditions to complete life—who takes away the produce of his neighbour’s labour, or deducts from that bodily health and comfort which his neighbour has earned by good conduct, must be forced to desist. And society is warranted in using such force as may be found requisite. Equity justifies the fellow-citizens of such a man in limiting the free exercise of his faculties to the extent necessary for preserving the free exercise of their own faculties.