But may not men have both
of them and yet be deficient in self-control? If, knowing and loving
their own interests, they do not always attend to them, may they not
be equally negligent of the interests of the public?
Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are
held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these
preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has
been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen
should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the
mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms
of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical
are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be
oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all
virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to
extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.
A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub
may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess
be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be
a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect
in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human
body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states.
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