Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good graces, nor the state which
is like them. And such states there are which first ordain under penalty
of death that no one shall alter the constitution, and then suffer
themselves to be flattered into and out of anything; and he who indulges
them and fawns upon them, is their leader and saviour. 'Yes, the men are
as bad as the states.' But do you not admire their cleverness? 'Nay, some
of them are stupid enough to believe what the people tell them.' And when
all the world is telling a man that he is six feet high, and he has no
measure, how can he believe anything else? But don't get into a passion:
to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut
off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play.
Minute enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad
ones.

And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to
Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all
things--that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon
the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any
sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No foreign god shall be supreme in
our realms...

Here, as Socrates would say, let us 'reflect on' (Greek) what has preceded:
thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens, but only of
the well-being of the State. They may be the happiest of men, but our
principal aim in founding the State was not to make them happy. They were
to be guardians, not holiday-makers. In this pleasant manner is presented
to us the famous question both of ancient and modern philosophy, touching
the relation of duty to happiness, of right to utility.

First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas. The