Two years afterward, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a copy from Plato. As is the Topica a copy from Aristotle, written on board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. There are some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow Cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow-Epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine.[308] Now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] He constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men. In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise De Divinatione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large. There is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the gods. Gold and silver will create impure desire. Ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple enough for a god. Metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for worship. An image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood, or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colors. White is best for the gods; and so on.[310] Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a god cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. It was seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the gods. How many a man has since learned to regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the