But what is to be understood by the terms recompense and punishment? The recompense of a good and virtuous action is the pleasure we derive from it, and for the very reason that it is good and virtuous.
There are to be distinguished, however, two other kinds of rewards, which, though they resemble recompense, are nevertheless very different from it namely, favor and remuneration.
Favor is a pleasure or an advantage bestowed on us, without our having deserved or earned it; a pure expression of the good-will of others towards us. It is thus that a king grants favors to his courtiers, that those in power distribute favors. It is thus we speak of the favors of fortune. Although theoretically there is no reason why we should understand the word favor in a bad sense, yet has it by usage come to signify not only an advantage undeserved, but unworthy; not only a legitimate preference which has its reason in sympathy, but an arbitrary choice more or less contrary to justice. However, although no such ugly signification need be attached to it, a favor, as a gratuitous gift, must always be distinguished from reward, which, on the contrary, implies a remuneration; that is to say, a gift in return for something.
Yet not all remuneration is necessarily a reward; and here we must establish another distinction between reward and remuneration. By remuneration we mean the price we pay for a service rendered us, no matter what motive may determine a person to render us this service; it is for its utility we pay, and for nothing else. The reward, on the contrary, implies the idea of a certain effort to do good. He who renders us a service from affection and devotion, would refuse being paid for it, and, vice versa, he who sells us his work does not ask us for a recompense, but for an equivalent of what he would have earned for himself if he had applied his work to his own wants.
On the contrary, we call every pain or suffering inflicted on an agent for committing a bad action, for no other reason than that it is bad, chastisement or punishment.
Punishment stands against damage or wrong; that is to say, against undeserved harm. The blows of fortune or of men are not always punishments. One may be struck without being punished.
Although we say in a general way that the ills that befall men are often the chastisements of their faults, yet this should not be taken too strictly, otherwise we should too easily transform the merely unfortunate into criminals.
Although recompenses and punishments may be only secondary means by which men may be led to do good and avoid evil, this should not be their essential office nor their real idea.
It is not that the law should be fulfilled that there are rewards and punishments in morality; it is because it has been fulfilled or violated. Such is the true principle of reward. It comes from justice, not utility.
For the same reason, chastisement, in its true sense, should not only be a menace insuring the execution of the law, but a reparation or expiation for its violation. The order of things disturbed by a rebellious will is again re-established by the suffering which is the consequence of the fault committed. In one sense it may be said that punishment is the remedy for the fault. In fact, injustice and vice being, as it were, the diseases of the soul, it is certain that suffering is their remedy; but only on condition that this suffering be accepted by way of chastisement. It is thus that grief has a purifying virtue, and that instead of being considered an evil, it may be called a good.