world: I know it has often been of great use, and that it maintains and
supplies most men's employment. There are vices that are lawful, as
there are many actions, either good or excusable, that are not lawful in
themselves.

The justice which in itself is natural and universal is otherwise and
more nobly ordered than that other justice which is special, national,
and constrained to the ends of government,

"Veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam
effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur;"

["We retain no solid and express portraiture of true right and
germane justice; we have only the shadow and image of it."
--Cicero, De Offic., iii. 17.]

insomuch that the sage Dandamis, hearing the lives of Socrates,
Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, judged them to be great men every way,
excepting that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws,
which, to second and authorise, true virtue must abate very much of its
original vigour; many vicious actions are introduced, not only by their
permission, but by their advice:

"Ex senatus consultis plebisquescitis scelera exercentur."

["Crimes are committed by the decrees of the Senate and the
popular assembly."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I follow the common phrase that distinguishes betwixt profitable and
honest things, so as to call some natural actions, that are not only