Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse, yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty. This theory is natural enough in the minds of men and women who believe in hell. In earlier ages men could not distinguish between the law of retaliation and the need to deter criminals by using violence against them when they transgressed. In many primitive systems of justice the law of retaliation is expressly consecrated. It is even introduced, inconsistently and as a survival of barbaric times, in the Babylonian and the Judaic codes, side by side with saner views. It is, of course, merely a systematisation of brute passion. In the beginning, if a man knocked your tooth out, you knocked one of his teeth out. With the growth of law and justice, the barbarous nature of the impulse was recognised, and the community, by its representatives, inflicted a "punishment" on the offender instead of allowing the offended to retaliate. With the modern improvement of moral sentiments we have realised that this is an imperfect advance on the barbaric idea. The community has no more right to "punish" than the offended individual had. We now impose hardship on an offender only for the purpose of intimidating him from repeating the offence, or of deterring others from offending. The idea is still somewhat crude, and a third stage will in time be reached; but it is satisfactory that we now--not since the advent of Christianity, but since the rise of modern humanism--all admit that the only permissible procedure is deterrence, and not punishment as such.