e art of government, they are--

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

To them, indeed, may be tracked nearly all the errors that are
undermining political society--Communism, Utilitarianism, the confusion
between tyranny and authority, and between lawlessness and freedom.

The notion that men lived originally in a state of nature, by violence
and without laws, is due to Critias. Communism in its grossest form was
recommended by Diogenes of Sinope. According to the Sophists, there is
no duty above expediency and no virtue apart from pleasure. Laws are an
invention of weak men to rob their betters of the reasonable enjoyment
of their superiority. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong; and
as there is no greater good than to do evil without fear of retribution,
so there is no worse evil than to suffer without the consolation of
revenge. Justice is the mask of a craven spirit; injustice is worldly
wisdom; and duty, obedience, self-denial are the impostures of
hypocrisy. Government is absolute, and may ordain what it pleases, and
no subject can complain that it does him wrong, but as long as he can
escape compulsion and punishment, he is always free to disobey.
Happiness consists in obtaining power and in eluding the necessity of
obedience; and he that gains a throne by perfidy and murder, deserves to
be truly envied.

Epicurus differed but little from the propounders of the code of
revolutionary despotism. All societies, he said, are founded on contract
for mutual protection. Good and evil are conventional terms, for the
thunderbolts of heaven fall alike on the just and the unjust. The
objection to wrongdoing is not the act, but in its consequences to the
wrongdoer. Wise men contrive laws, not to bind, but to protect
themselves; and when they prove to be unprofitable they cease to be
valid. The illiberal sentiments of even the most illustrious
metaphysicians are disclosed in the saying of Aristotle, that the mark
of the worst governments is that they leave men free to live as they
please.

If you will bear in mind that Socrates, the best of the pagans, knew of
no higher criterion for men, of no better guide of conduct, than the
laws of each country; that Plato, whose sublime doctrine was so near an
anticipation of Christianity that celebrated theologians wished his
works to be forbidden, lest men should be content with them, and
indifferent to any higher dogma--to whom