as State, undertakes to dispense justice to warring factions. Justice ceases to be vengeance, but cannot dispense with the punishing rod. Society cannot exist without laws, and all legislation implies enforcement of laws by punishing their infringement. To punish, however, is to use force for the resistance of evil. An imperfect society in an imperfect world cannot exist without its courts and constabularies, its prisons and scaffolds. The State as police cannot do its duty without resort to physical force. If the guardians of society were to don ash-coloured robes, and retreat before the forces of evil, or make themselves known as non-resistants to evil, unprotected society would soon welter in crime and bloodshed. Militant evil, with no deterrent combatants in the field, would throttle passive good to death.
Persuasion and force are two chief factors indispensable in human affairs. Individuals, as well as society, can endure wrong patiently and try to reclaim the wrong-doer by good counsel and admonition. But when persuasion fails in its purpose, and wicked people become more desperate in inflicting injury, endurance on the part of the recipient of injury ceases to be virtue. It encourages evil, exposes society to danger, and does harm even to the perpetrator of crime by allowing him without restraint to sink deeper in guilt. The human in man is amenable to persuasion, but his animal nature must be subdued by force. Society requires the coercion of the State, because it is imperfect. To those members of the State who are walking on the path of perfection or who are striving to come nearer to perfection, coercive laws of the State do not apply. As society evolves towards perfection, persuasive power will prove an increasingly effective urge to good behaviour, and force will gradually recede into the background. In the perfect society to come, force will have no place.
To be good and eschew evil are passive virtues; to further good and to fight evil are active virtues. Personal salvation is the basic principle, the motive power that inspires all religious life. Zarathushtra insists that every man's duty is to seek salvation of all mankind. To secure individual salvation and leave others to their fate, without working and struggling for their salvation, is to fail in one's duty towards his fellow-men. To be good, but not to make others good; not to be evil, yet not to resist evil caused by others, are merely negative virtues. Just as
