Nor does the vindicator require to show any special personal
damage, accruing to him as a friend or relative, from a stain on the
character of the deceased, to justify him in proceeding to censure it.
That such a form of ideal acquisition, and even a right in an
individual after death against survivors, is thus actually founded,
cannot, therefore, be disputed, although the possibility of such a
right is not capable of logical deduction.
There is no ground for drawing visionary inferences from what has
just been stated, to the presentiment of a future life and invisible
relations to departed souls. For the considerations connected with
this right turn on nothing more than the purely moral and juridical
relation which subsists among men, even in the present life, as
rational beings. Abstraction is, however, made from all that belongs
physically to their existence in space and time; that is, men are
considered logically apart from these physical concomitants of their
nature, not as to their state when actually deprived of them, but only
in so far as being spirits they are in a condition that might
realize the injury done them by calumniators. Any one who may
falsely say something against me a hundred years hence injures me even
now. For in the pure juridical relation, which is entirely rational
and surprasensible, abstraction is made from the physical conditions
of time, and the calumniator is as culpable as if he had committed the
offence in my lifetime; only this will not be tried by a criminal
process, but he will only be punished with that loss of honour he
would have caused to another, and this is inflicted upon him by public
opinion according to the lex talionis.
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