These are indeed extraordinarily vigorous sanctions, which, though they fail to have any effect on the unbeliever, make a very deep impression on the believer, and are well fitted to determine his actions. But they imply a debasement of the motives for leading a moral life, which are no longer the outcome of insight and a convinced desire for good, but the result of fear and avidity, a speculation for profit, a prudent flight from danger. The practice of morality becomes a safe investment for the father of a family who hopes to find his savings augmented by interest in the hereafter, and the avoidance of vice becomes a schoolboy's fear of punishment. Nevertheless, the view is widely held by superficial, practical men that these imaginary and deceptive sanctions of Morality cannot be dispensed with, that only the fear of hell can keep the masses from giving themselves up to every form of vice and crime, that only the promise of paradise is capable of inducing them to act unselfishly and make sacrifices, and that all bonds of discipline would be loosened if they ceased to believe in a last judgment and an hereafter with its rewards and punishments.
This whole system of sanctions in a future life is a transcendental projection (according with primitive, childlike thought) of immanent practices and forms in the positive administration of justice which are transferred to a class of actions that successfully evade it. Traditional and customary Law, as well as written Law, puts its whole emphasis on sanctions; it partakes itself of the nature of a sanction. Without sanctions it has no meaning. It is not kindly counsel, nor fatherly admonition, nor wise advice, it is a stern command, it is coercion, and this arouses only scorn if it is not armed with the means to make itself a reality to which the unwilling must also submit, because they cannot help themselves. There is no law, there can be no law, which is not supplemented by arrangements that make it binding for everyone.
In the British House of Commons it has been customary for many hundred years to designate members as the representatives of their particular constituency. Only if a member commits a grave offence against the rules of the House does he run the risk of the Speaker's calling him by name, but this case has not arisen within the memory of man. A disrespectful Irish member of Parliament, urged by perverse curiosity, asked the Speaker one day: "What would happen if you called me by my name?" The Speaker thought for a short time and then answered with impressive gravity: "I have no idea, but it must be something terrible." Such a mysterious threat of an unknown catastrophe may suffice for a picked assembly whose members would no doubt maintain order and observe all the rules of parliamentary decency, even if they were not held in check by the fear of some dark danger. It would not be sufficient by a long way to guarantee the rule of Law in a society which includes individuals of the most varied disposition, mind development, education and strength of impulse.