XII. * * * * * * what we call wisdom, urges us to increase our wealth, our riches, and to extend our possessions. How could that great commander[21] who formerly carried the limits of his empire into Asia; how could he govern, bear sway, reign, have dominion, and the full enjoyment of voluptuousness, unless he took something from others? But justice orders us to spare all, to consult the welfare of mankind, to give to every one his own, and to abstain from every thing that is sacred, every thing that is public, every thing which is not our own. What therefore is to be done? If wisdom is consulted, riches, power, wealth, honours, authority, empire, are open to individuals and nations. But since it is the public interest we are discussing, instances of a public nature will illustrate better; and as the same degree of right is in both, I shall advert to the wisdom of a nation, and I shall omit the rest. Our own nation, which Africanus in his discourse yesterday, traced to its origin, whose empire already extends over the earth, has it, once least of them all, become so by justice or wisdom? * * * * * * [Four or eight pages wanting.] XIV. For all who possess the power of life and death over a people are tyrants, yet they prefer to be called kings by the name of the good Jupiter. When certain persons through the influence of their riches, their class, or other circumstances, possess themselves of the government, it is a faction. Yet they call themselves, the better class. If the people however are uppermost and rule every thing at their own pleasure, that is called liberty; nevertheless it is licentiousness. But when one fears another, man mistrusting man, and one class another, then because no one confides, a sort of pact is made between the people and the great, from whence that combined form of government springs, which Scipio has praised. So that neither nature, or the will is the mother of justice, but weakness. For when one thing is to be chosen out of three, either to do injustice without permitting it to be done to you; or to do it and permit it also; or neither one or the other: the best is to do it with impunity[22] if you can; the second best is neither to do it, nor suffer it to be done to you: the worst of all is to be eternally fighting now on account of your own aggressions, now on account of those of others * * * * * [An unknown number of pages wanting.] * * * Except the Arcadians and the Athenians, who, I suppose, fearing lest at some period this decree[23] of justice might appear, have feigned themselves to be sprung from the earth, like the little mice we see in the fields.