The moral culture of a people exerts the greatest influence here. In every private undertaking, a great part of the expense attending it, and in every state, a great part of the expense of its police system, and of its system of administering justice, is occasioned only by the dishonesty of men. If all this expense could be dispensed with, and full confidence placed in individuals, it would be possible to devote much more time and energy to positively useful labor.(259) In estimating the labor-power of different nations or different periods of time, the division of population according to age is also of importance. As a rule, the labor-power of males is greatest from the age of twenty-five to the age of forty-five. The more numerous, therefore, the class of the population between these ages is, the more favorably, other things being equal, is it situated as regards labor.(260)(261) But, as a rule, the relative number of full-grown people is greatest in highly civilized nations. (§ 248.)(262) Section XLI. Labor.—Effect Of The Esteem In Which It Is Held. As civilization advances, labor becomes more honorable. All barbarous nations despise it as slavish. _Pigrum et iners videtur sudore adquirere quod possis sanguine parare_: has been the motto of all medieval times. In heathen Iceland, the owner of a piece of land might be deprived of it by an adversary who could overpower him in single combat. This mode of acquisition was considered more honorable than purchase. It was Thor’s own form of investiture. The ideas of the Romans on rightful acquisition may be inferred from the word _mancipium_ (manu capere).(263) Pure Christianity, on the other hand, preached the honorableness of labor from the first (Thess. 4, 11; II. Thess. 3, 8 seq.; Eph. 4, 28). And so in the time of the Reformation,(264) when Christendom was returning to its primitive purity.