All schemes of education and moral training fall into two categories; instruction is imparted in the one case by precept, in the other by practical exercising of the character. All other legislators, following their divergent opinions, selected the particular method which each preferred and neglected the other. Thus the Lacedæmonians and Cretans employed practical, not verbal, training; whereas the Athenians and nearly all the rest of the Greeks made laws enjoining what actions might or might not be performed, but neglected to familiarize the people with them by putting them into practice. Our legislator, on the other hand, took great care to combine both systems. He did not leave practical training in morals without a written code;[401] nor did he permit the letter of the law to remain inoperative. Starting from the very beginning with the food of which we partake from infancy and the private life[402] of the home, he left nothing, however insignificant, to the discretion and caprice of the individual. What meats a man should abstain from, and what he may enjoy; with what persons he should associate; what period should be devoted respectively to strenuous labour and to rest;[403]—for all this our leader made the law the standard and rule, that we might live under it as under a father and master[404] and be guilty of no sin through wilfulness or ignorance. All Jews Know their Law, which is Read Every Week For ignorance he left no pretext. He proved[405] the Law to be the most excellent and necessary form of instruction, ordaining, not that it should be heard once for all or twice or on several occasions, but that every week men should desert their other occupations and assemble to listen to the Law and to obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge of it; a practice which all other legislators seem to have neglected.[406] Indeed, most men, so far from living in accordance with their own laws, hardly know what they are. Only when they have done wrong do they learn from others that they have transgressed the law. Even those of them who hold the highest and most important offices admit their ignorance; for they employ professional legal experts as assessors and leave them in charge of the administration of affairs. But, should any one of our nation be questioned about the laws, he would repeat them all more readily than his own name. The result, then, of our thorough grounding in the laws from the time when we first had any sensations whatever, is that we have them as it were engraven on our souls. A transgressor is a rarity and to elude punishment by entreaty an impossibility.—_c. Ap._ II. 16-18 (164-178). Footnote 394: These words occur only in Eusebius’s citation (_Præp. Ev._ VIII. 8), not in the MSS of Josephus. Footnote 395: Or, according to another reading, “unbegotten.” Footnote 396: Lit. “to time everlasting.” Footnote 397: Or “essence.” Footnote 398: Lit. “the truth of the doctrine.” Footnote 399: