Suppose that each moral action were paid, so to speak, by some temporal advantage; the act, having nothing more of the supernatural, would no longer merit a recompense of this kind. Suppose, on the other hand, that in virtue of some divine law the thief’s hand should fall off the moment he committed a theft. People would refrain from theft as they refrain from putting their hands under the butcher’s cleaver. The moral order would disappear entirely.
