Of God and His CreaturesA fine se divertit but not avertit.
Let O be the origin of co-ordinates, representing man's start in life. Let f be the last end. Let p be the position of a soul in venial sin; q the position of a soul in mortal sin. It will be seen that the soul at p has travelled praeter finem, not contra finem:it will have to he reduced to order by penance and pain, represented by the value of the ordinate p p' along the axis of Y. On the other hand, q represents a soul that has wandered away in a negative direction, quite contra finem: if it leaves the body at that point, that soul is lost. By penance it has to be brought back to the origin at O, and so on to the positive side. Thus represented at the last day, by points moving to the left and to the right along the axis of X, as well as upwards along Y, the histories of human lives must make figures of wonderful complexity.