In the last part of his treatise Guyau deals with the difficult problem of “sanction,” so ultimately connected with ethics, and, it must be added, with religion. The Providence who rewards and punishes us, according to the orthodox religious creed of Christendom, is merely a personified “sanction” or distributive justice, operating in a terrestrial and celestial court of assize. Guyau condemns this as an utterly immoral conception. Religious sanctions, as he has not much difficulty in showing, are more cruel than those which a man could imagine himself inflicting upon his mortal enemy. The “Heavenly Father” ought at least to be as good as earthly ones, who do not cruelly punish their children. Guyau touches upon an important point here, which will be further emphasised—namely, the necessity for making our idea of God, if we have one at all, harmonious with our own ethical conceptions. The old ideas of the divinity are profoundly immoral and are based on physical force. This is natural because those views which have survived in modern times are those of primitive and savage people to whom the most holy was the most powerful and physically majestic. But, says Guyau, now that we see that “all physical force represents moral weakness,” the idea of God the All-terrible, with his hell-fire ready for the sinful soul, must be condemned as immoral blasphemy itself. “God,” he remarks, “in damning any soul might be said to damn himself.” Virtue is really its own reward. No one should be or do good in order to gain an entry into paradise or to escape the torments of hell. That is to build morality on an immoral principle and on a belief, not in goodness as valuable in and for itself, but on a basis of material self-interest alone, “the best policy.” It is true, Guyau admits, that virtue involves happiness, but it is not in this sense. A conflict between “pleasure” and virtue is usually one of higher _versus_ lower ideals. Virtue is not a precedent to sense-happiness, and in this sense is not at all equivalent or bound up with happiness, but, as the facts of life reveal, very often opposed to it. Guyau opposes the ordinary view of punishment in society and shows that it is both immoral and socially harmful in its application. It adds evil to evil, and legal murder is really more absurd than the illegal murder. Punishment, capital or other, is no “compensation” exacted for the crime committed, and it never can be such. Attempts to treat and cure the guilty one would, Guyau suggests, be far more rational, humane and really beneficial to society itself, which at present creates by its punishments, especially those inflicted for first offences, a “criminal class.” One should convert the criminal before punishing him, and then, Guvau asks, if he is converted, why punish him?