Note 6 — FREDERIC THE GREAT’S EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE.

But if crime carries with it its own more or less cruel punishment, if the most continued and most barbarous habit can not entirely blot out repentance in the crudest hearts, if criminals are lacerated by the very memory of their deeds, why should we frighten the imagination of weak minds, by a hell, by specters, and by precipices of fire even less real than those of Pascal?6 Why must we have recourse to fables, as an honest pope once said himself, to torment even the unhappy wretches who are executed, because we do not think that they are sufficiently punished by their own conscience, their first executioner? I do not mean to say that all criminals are unjustly punished; I only maintain that those whose will is depraved, and whose conscience is extinguished, are punished enough by their remorse when they come to themselves, a remorse, I venture to assert, from which nature should in this case have delivered unhappy souls dragged on by a fatal necessity.