XXVIII. People overturn the fundamental principles established by nature, when they divorce expediency from moral rectitude. For we all seek to obtain what is to us expedient; we are irresistibly drawn toward it, and we cannot possibly be otherwise. For who is there that would turn his back upon what is to him expedient? Or rather, who is there that does not exert himself to the utmost to secure it? But because we cannot discover it anywhere except in good report, propriety, and moral rectitude, we look upon these three for that reason as the first and the highest objects of endeavour, while what we term expediency we account not so much an ornament to our dignity as a necessary incident to living. #Arguments against Regulus's fidelity to his oath:# #(1) he had no need to fear God's wrath,# *102* "What significance, then," some one will say, "do we attach to an oath? It is not that we fear the wrath of Jove, is it? Not at all; it is the universally accepted view of all philosophers that God is never angry, never hurtful. This is the doctrine not only of those[BZ] who teach that God is Himself free from troubling cares and that He imposes no trouble upon others, but also of those[CA] who believe that God is ever working and ever directing His world. Furthermore, suppose Jupiter had been wroth, what greater injury could He have inflicted upon Regulus than Regulus brought upon himself? Religious scruple, therefore, had no such preponderance as to outweigh so great expediency." #(2) "Of two evils choose the less,"# "Or was he afraid that his act would be morally wrong? As to that, first of all, the proverb says 'Of evils choose the least.' Did that moral wrong, then, really involve as great an evil as did that awful torture? And secondly, there are the lines of Accius: _Thyestes._ 'Hast thou broke thy faith?' _Atreus._ 'None have I giv'n; none give I ever to the faithless.' Although this sentiment is put into the mouth of a wicked king, still it is illuminating in its correctness." #(3) oaths extorted by constraint not binding,# *103* Their third argument is this: just as we maintain that some things seem expedient but are not, so they maintain, some things seem morally right but are not. "For example," they contend, "in this very case it seems morally right for Regulus to have returned to torture for the sake of being true to his oath. But it proves not to be morally right, because what an enemy extorted by force ought not to have been binding." #(4) exceptional expediency makes right.# As their concluding argument, they add: whatever is highly expedient may prove to be morally right, even if it did not seem so in advance. These are in substance the arguments raised against the conduct of Regulus. Let us consider them each in turn. [BZ] The Epicureans. [CA] The Stoics. *104* XXIX. "Non fuit Iuppiter metuendus ne iratus noceret, qui neque irasci solet nec nocere."