1237. While "cause and effect" in themselves are impersonal and do not create vindictiveness, "punishment", on the other hand, is unpleasantness directed towards another person and carried out personally as revenge by a mentally wrongly adjusted individual. When this unpleasantness is inflicted upon this other being it must of necessity immediately feel "unjustly" treated. For this being has of course acted precisely upon what must seem "just" from its specific step. If it had not acted upon this view, it would have revealed itself as nothing but an abnormal being, which in turn is the same as a mentally ill being. And illness, as we know, cannot be healed by "punishment" either. The actions of any normal being in all situations and regardless of which actions, will certainly be directed and controlled by its "sense of justice". When a normal terrestrial human being steals, is it not conceivable that it is based on preconditions or motives that its particular view of life or its particular step in evolution characterises or lets it sense as "just"? When the same being inflicts some unpleasantness on another being in the form of "revenge" or "punishment" for something done by the latter* being, is it not then conceivable that the "avenger" feels that his "revenge" is completely "just" and therefore well-deserved? And is it not conceivable that such an "avenger" would feel that he was "unjustly" treated if he were sentenced to some kind of "punishment" for his action? Is it not conceivable that from his own particular step a "cheat" or "swindler" also sees himself as a hero and rejoices every time he has cheated his fellow beings and appropriated assets that he in reality in no honest, legal way had any justified claim to? Every being's realistic view of life can be constituted or borne only by the preconditions that its particular step in evolution forms in its mentality. Indeed, what other view could prove equal to this being's own sensory perceptions?
 
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* Translator's note: "førstnævnte" (former) in the first Danish edition was changed to "sidstnævnte" (latter) in the 2004 edition.