- Let justice be done though the world perish.
- That is how the sententia is commonly read, with people unaware of a second meaning that was the motto of the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I.: There ought to be justice or else the world is going to perish. We can also further simplify this double meaning. One would be: Fight, regardless whether we will all get destroyed in the process or not. The other says: Behave, or else all of us will die. Another way of putting the basic principle of politics among nationsâ"identical with the very foundations of all morality: Treat your fellow human like yourself, or we all have to die.
