Why?
For various reasons. The first being force and might. Some one stronger interferes and prevents.
Every child comes in contact with this principle at an early stage. It cannot have what it wants, it cannot do as it wills—because the nurse or the mother says "no."
A little later, if it undertakes to gratify a certain wish which has been forbidden, if it gives free play to an instinct for pleasure, against orders, it is slapped and scolded. It is made to feel that it has done wrong. And when one does wrong, punishment follows—one must learn to expect that.
This same principle confronts the individual in later years,—all through life. First the nurse and mother; then the father and other members of the family; then the neighbors and people at large; the police and the laws. All these embody the same principle, they represent greater force, without the individual, which interferes with its instincts, its pleasures, its wishes, which forbids certain things—declares they are wrong—and punishes, if they are done.
On top of this comes the church and religion. In a more exalted way, appealing to the imagination and the inner spirit, they nevertheless apply the same principle. Certain things are sinful and wicked, certain instincts and desires are temptations, contrived by an evil spirit. If temptations are yielded to, if evil is committed, punishment is sure to follow, if not in this world, then in another, a world beyond.
In this connection, it is not a question of any particular church, or creed, or any particular religion, but simply of the fundamental idea of all churches and all religions,—the idea that somewhere, somehow, in a spiritual world of some sort, good will be rewarded and evil punished.
Crudely and briefly stated, it is the same fundamental principle that begins with the child and nursemaid, and runs up through the highest forms of church and religious appeal. This is good, you are allowed and urged to do it, and it will bring reward; that is bad, you are commanded to resist it, and if you yield, it will bring punishment.
This, then, is what we have called the second consideration in the problem of life.
There is another consideration, of a different order, which exerts an influence on the acts of an individual; which causes it to repress certain appetites and desires, on the one hand, and urges it, on the other hand, to do certain things against its instincts and inclination.