Nor does one state take care that the citizens of the
other are such as they ought to be, nor see that those who come
under the terms of the treaty do no wrong or wickedness at an, but
only that they do no injustice to one another. Whereas, those who care
for good government take into consideration virtue and vice in states.
Whence it may be further inferred that virtue must be the care of a
state which is truly so called, and not merely enjoys the name: for
without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs
only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and
law is only a convention, 'a surety to one another of justice,' as the
sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens
This is obvious; for suppose distinct places, such as Corinth and
Megara, to be brought together so that their walls touched, still they
would not be one city, not even if the citizens had the right to
intermarry, which is one of the rights peculiarly characteristic of
states. Again, if men dwelt at a distance from one another, but not so
far off as to have no intercourse, and there were laws among them that
they should not wrong each other in their exchanges, neither would
this be a state. Let us suppose that one man is a carpenter, another a
husbandman, another a shoemaker, and so on, and that their number is
ten thousand: nevertheless, if they have nothing in common but
exchange, alliance, and the like, that would not constitute a state.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123