1039. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUNISHMENTS AND VASTATIONS Every punishment in the other life takes place for the sake of a spirit's amendment, for the nature of the punishments is such as to take away evils, as it were, or else induce the faculty of doing good. Thus all punishments, in themselves, are vastations, because they devastate evils by the induction of the faculties of speaking truth and of doing good. That faculty, however, is a superaddition - a gift of the Lord. For if evils were only taken away without the gift of the faculties of good, nothing of man would then remain, for in man there is nothing but evil.