the qualities of the soul and reason of virtue, and of
pleasure wherein they think the felicity of man to rest; but that the
soul is immortal, and by the bountiful goodness of God ordained to
felicity, and to our virtues and good deeds rewards be appointed
hereafter, and to evil deeds punishments. Which principles, if they were
disannulled, there is no man but would diligently pursue pleasure by
right or wrong. But now felicity resteth only in that pleasure that is
good and honest. Virtue they define to be life according to nature,
which prescribeth us a joyful life.

But of what they call counterfeit pleasures they make naught; as of
pride in apparel and gems, or in vain honours; or of dicing; or hunting,
which they deem the most abject kind of butchery. But of true pleasures
they give to the soul intelligence and that pleasure that cometh of
contemplation of the truth, and the pleasant remembrance of the good
life past. Of pleasures of the body they count first those that be
sensibly felt and perceived, and thereto the body's health, which
lacking, there is no place for any pleasure. But chiefest they hold the
pleasures of the mind, the consciousness of virtue and the good life.
Making little of the pleasures of appetite, they yet count it madness to
reject the same for a vain shadow of virtue.

For bondmen, they have malefactors of their own people, criminals
condemned to death in other lands, or poor labourers of other lands who,
of their own free will, choose rather to be in bondage with them. The
sick they tend with great affection; but, if the disease be not only
incurable but full of anguish, the priests exhort them that they should
willingly die, but cause him not to die against his will. The women
marry not before eighteen years, and the men four years later. But if
one have offended before marriage, he or she whether it be, is sharply
punished. And before marriage the man and the woman are showed each to
the other by discreet persons. To mock a man for his deformity is
counted great dishonesty and reproach.

They do not only fear their people from doing evil by punishments, but
also allure them to virtue with rewards of honour. They have but few
laws, reproving other nations that innumerable books of laws and
expositions upon the same be not sufficient. Furthermore, they banish
all such as do craftily handle the laws, but think it meet that every
man should plead his own matter.

_III.--Of the Wars and