There--are many in our times who talk at this rate, wishing that
this hot emotion that is now amongst us might discharge itself in some
neighbouring war, for fear lest all the peccant humours that now reign in
this politic body of ours may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever
still in the height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a
foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not believe
that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel with
others for our own advantage:

"Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,
Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris."

["Rhamnusian virgin, let nothing ever so greatly please me which is
taken without justice from the unwilling owners"
--Catullus, lxviii. 77.]

And yet the weakness of our condition often pushes us upon the necessity
of making use of ill means to a good end. Lycurgus, the most perfect
legislator that ever was, virtuous and invented this very unjust practice
of making the helots, who were their slaves, drunk by force, to the end
that the Spartans, seeing them so lost and buried in wine, might abhor
the excess of this vice. And yet those were still more to blame who of
old gave leave that criminals, to what sort of death soever condemned,
should be cut up alive by the physicians, that they might make a true
discovery of our inward parts, and build their art upon greater
certainty; for, if we must run into excesses, it is more excusable to do
it for the health of the soul than that of the body; as the Romans
trained up the people to valour and the contempt of dangers and death by
those furious spectacles of gladiators and fencers, who, having to fight
it out to the last, cut, mangled, and killed one another in their