16. If then a city is a unit and a continuous thing, the same is undoubtedly true of the family that springs from one and the same beginning and engenders a certain power and a natural bond of sympathy between all its members. That which is begotten is not as if it were the handiwork of an artisan, separate from him who begets, for it is something that proceeds out of him, not something framed by him; consequently it possesses and bears within itself some portion of its original that may rightfully be chastised or honored. If I were not afraid I should be thought to be jesting I would say that the statue of Kasander has suffered a greater wrong at the hands of the Athenians when it was melted down, and the body of Dionysius when after death it was carried beyond their boundary by the Syracusans, than their descendants in paying the penalty for the deeds of these men. For in a statue of Kasander there was no part of him, and the soul of Dionysius had left the dead body long previously; but in the case of Nysaeus and of Apollokrates and of Antipater and of Philip and of all other persons in like manner who are the children of vicious parents, nature has implanted this predominant principle and it is ever present with them; is not dormant or inoperative, but they live in it and are nurtured by it; with them it abides and it directs their actions. It is not cruel or unreasonable if the children of these men share their destiny. All things considered, here, as in the healing art, what is advantageous is just, and he would make himself ridiculous who should affirm that in diseases of the hip-joint it was wrong to cauterize the thumb, and in the case of an ulcerated liver, to make an incision in the belly, and to anoint the tips of the horns of cattle if their hoofs are soft. So in the matter of punishments; he who thinks anything else is just than what will cure vice, and is scandalized if the healing is affected on one party for the sake of another,—like the opening of a vein to relieve the eyes—evidently sees no farther than what is plain to the senses. He does not take into account that even a schoolmaster, when he punishes one pupil also corrects others, and that a general who decimates his army punishes all his soldiers. Likewise, certain qualities, good as well as bad, are transmitted not only from one body to another, but even more readily from one soul to another. For in the one case it seems reasonable that the same conditions should also produce the same change, while in the other, the soul impelled by motives and impulses is naturally inclined by boldness or timidity to become worse or better.”