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ULTIMATE JUSTICE: Whenever something happens it happens for a good reason. Once a cause is committed to an effect there is no turning it back. There is no such thing as an accident which should have happened but didn't. A near-miss is a near-miss and not an accident, even if the potential of an accident existed for a time. An accident which should happen will always happen if the circumstances demand it.

Therefore whenever a person secretly or openly condemns nature for its apparent injustice, for the fact, let us say, that lightning struck a tree and killed someone sheltering beneath its branches, or that a flood swept over a town and killed people and damaged property, or that a volcano erupted and spilled molten lava down onto some nearby townsfolk - whenever, I say, a person condemns nature on these and similar accounts, understandable though his condemnation may be, he is unwittingly turning his back on justice, on the justice of a world which would seem to be saying: This cause is bound to have a specific effect; if people are in the way of it, then that is their fault. 'A' must lead to 'B' whatever the consequences or, put mathematically, 2 x 2 = 4 and not 5, 6, or 7. If you happen to be sheltering beneath the branches of a tree when lightning strikes it (and the lightning couldn't help arising), then you must suffer the consequences. If, by any chance, you sometime happen to be in the path of oncoming lava, you must now accept the fact that it wasn't necessarily destined to kill anyone but will only kill or maim people if they are rash, unfortunate, ignorant, or brave enough to dwell under a volcano's shadow. To suggest that the eruption shouldn't occur would be as unreasonable as to suggest that mutually attractive men and women shouldn't fall in love, or that 2 x 2 shouldn't equal 4, or that a poison berry shouldn't prove highly detrimental to its eater. For whenever something happens, it does so for a good reason.

An earthquake, for example, which has to occur because secretly engendered by some planetary necessity which, unbeknown to man, simultaneously safeguards and maintains the overall stability of the planet, is not by any means guaranteed to occur in close proximity to human dwellings. But if it does so, one ought to bear in mind that (1) it had to occur in consequence of a combination of subterranean planetary influences; (2) the people killed and/or injured by it will normally represent only a tiny percentage of the total human population of the globe, a percentage which will either die or suffer injury as a sacrifice, so to speak, for the overall welfare of mankind in general; (3) these same people might not have been afflicted by it had they built their dwellings elsewhere, or if technology had evolved an efficient early-warning system which could pinpoint the anticipated place of the quake and thereby give inhabitants there sufficient time to abandon their dwellings and move to the nearest safety zone.

Like molten lava, hurricanes, floods, typhoons, and lightning, the earthquake kills indiscriminately, but it only kills what is in its way. Hideous as these things usually are, a majority of us would probably prefer the occasional emergence of potentially death-engendering planetary phenomena to the wholesale destruction of the planet itself brought about by a gigantic explosion in the bowls of the earth. Large-scale explosions fostered by man are undoubtedly dreadful enough. But experience of a gigantic 'natural' explosion which ultimately tore the entire planet apart would be far worse! For where the elements rule, the elements decide.

If earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, etc., were not necessary, they wouldn't happen. Admittedly, science can give man the advantage of anticipating them and even of directing the force of various outbreaks of natural violence into a particular area or spot, as with lightning conductors. But a civilization which got to a point of trying to prevent the emergence of such phenomena could eventually find itself paying the price of frustrating a series of comparatively minor disturbances by subsequently bringing upon itself the horrendous devastation of a major one. For sooner or later a phenomenon which has been frustrated or repressed too long will explode with a force that would have made the force of its previously unchecked explosion seem relatively harmless.

Now what applies to the external world of nature doubtless applies no less to the internal world of the psyche, where neuroses and psychoses are the price one must occasionally pay for one's sanity.