s, get possession of the
entire government, it is a faction; but they choose to denominate
themselves an aristocracy. If the people gets the upper hand, and rules
everything after its capricious will, they call it liberty, but it is
in fact license. And when every man is a guard upon his neighbor, and
every class is a guard upon every other class, then because no one
trusts in his own strength, a kind of compact is formed between the
great and the little, from whence arises that mixed kind of government
which Scipio has been commending. Thus justice, according to these
facts, is not the daughter of nature or conscience, but of human
imbecility. For when it becomes necessary to choose between these three
predicaments, either to do wrong without retribution, or to do wrong
with retribution, or to do no wrong at all, it is best to do wrong with
impunity; next, neither to do wrong nor to suffer for it; but nothing
is more wretched than to struggle incessantly between the wrong we
inflict and that we receive. Therefore, he who attains to that first
end[341] * * *

XV. This was the sum of the argument of Carneades: that men
had established laws among themselves from considerations of
advantage, varying them according to their different customs,
and altering them often so as to adapt them to the times; but
that there was no such thing as natural law; that all men and
all other animals are led to their own advantage by the
guidance of nature; that there is no such thing as justice,
or, if there be, that it is extreme folly, since a man would
injure himself while consulting the interests of others. And
he added these arguments, that all nations who were
flourishing and dominant, and even the Romans themselves, who
were the masters of the whole world, if they wished to be
just--that is to say, if they restored all that belonged to
others--would have to return to their cottages, and to lie
down in want and misery.

Except, perhaps, of the Arcadians and Athenians, who, I presume,
dreading that this great act of retribution might one day arrive,
pretend that they were sprung from the earth, like so many field-mice.

XVI. In reply to these statements, the following arguments are often
adduced by those who are not unskilful in discussions, and who, in this
question, have all the greater weight of authority, because, when we
inquire, Who is a good man?--unde