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A word more on the origin and end of punishment⁠—two problems which are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naivete. They find out some “end” in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the causa fiendi of the punishment, and⁠—they have done the trick. But the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to which the “End in Law” 4 ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, difficult though it is to master, should none the less be mastered in every detail.⁠—The origin of the existence of a thing and its final utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of ends, are toto coelo