““Answer this question for me now: When does the Law authorize punishment?” Without any hesitation the diviner replied, “When there’s evidence!” “Evidence?” Yazzal did not respond, and so Ewar said menacingly, “But where’s the evidence? There’s no clear-cut evidence anywhere in our world.” “Here, you’ve answered the question.” “What do you mean?” “I mean that the difficulty of rendering a verdict against someone arises from the difficulty of obtaining clear-cut evidence.” “But evil-doers will ruin the earth and turn upside down the lives of oppressed people without our being able to pinpoint the truth of what you call ‘evidence’ and I term ‘slander’.” “Do you know why? It’s because the Law knows that there is nothing in the created world more difficult than passing judgment on a man for an offense.” “Is that because we all commit offenses?” “I don’t know, but generations have learned from trial and error that it is the lesser of two evils for the masses to experience injustice than for one man to be wrongly convicted.” “I bet this is, in and of itself, a scourge. I bet this is what the tribes call a calamity.” “We are not heroic when we punish. We are heroic when we forgive. That’s what the Law says.” Ewar swayed to the right and left and repeated, as if wailing a lament, “The Law, the Law; how inhumane are the commandments of the Law!””
