of the name of a people. And thus, if a
commonwealth is a state of a people, and if that is not a
people which is not united by a common feeling of right, and
if there is no right where there is no justice, then the
undoubted inference is, that where there is no justice there
is no commonwealth. Moreover, justice is that virtue which
gives every one his own.

No war can be undertaken by a just and wise state unless for faith or
self-defence. This self-defence of the State is enough to insure its
perpetuity, and this perpetuity is what all patriots desire. Those
afflictions which even the hardiest spirits smart under--poverty,
exile, prison, and torment--private individuals seek to escape from by
an instantaneous death. But for states, the greatest calamity of all is
that of death, which to individuals appears a refuge. A state should be
so constituted as to live forever. For a commonwealth there is no
natural dissolution as there is for a man, to whom death not only
becomes necessary, but often desirable. And when a state once decays
and falls, it is so utterly revolutionized, that, if we may compare
great things with small, it resembles the final wreck of the universe.

All wars undertaken without a proper motive are unjust. And no war can
be reputed just unless it be duly announced and proclaimed, and if it
be not preceded by a rational demand for restitution.

Our Roman Commonwealth, by defending its allies, has got possession of
the world.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH BOOK,

BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.

In this fourth book Cicero treats of morals and education, and
the use and abuse of stage entertainments. We retain nothing
of this important book save a few scattered fragments, the
beauty of which fills us with the greater regret for the
passages we have lost.

BOOK IV.

FRAGMENTS.

I. * * * Since mention has been made of the body and of the
mind, I will endeavor to explain the theory of each as well
as the weakness of my understanding is able to comprehend
it--a duty which I think it the more becoming in me to
undertake, because Marcus Tullius, a man of singular genius,
after having attempted to perform it in the fourth book of
his treatise on the Commonwealth, compressed a subject of
wide extent within narrow limits, only touching lightly on
all