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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;1 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.
1 For this idea that the multiplication of laws is a symptom of degeneracy see Tacit. Ann. 3.27: corruptissima republica plurimae leges.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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