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İngilizce İngilizce

39 Such, then, as I have described, was the nature of the Council which our forefathers charged with the supervision of moral discipline—a council which considered that those who believed that the best citizens are produced in a state where the laws are prescribed with the greatest exactnessCf. Isoc. 4.78; Isoc. 12.144. were blind to the truth; for in that case there would be no reason why all of the Hellenes should not be on the same level, at any rate in so far as it is easy to borrow written codes from each other.

40 But in fact, they thought, virtue is not advanced by written laws but by the habits of every-day life; for the majority of men tend to assimilate the manners and morals amid which they have been reared. Furthermore, they held that where there is a multitude of specific laws, it is a sign that the state is badly governed;For this idea that the multiplication of laws is a symptom of degeneracy see Tacit. Ann. 3.27: corruptissima republica plurimae leges. for it is in the attempt to build up dikes against the spread of crime that men in such a state feel constrained to multiply the laws.