Areopagiticus (36-40)

But perhaps some might object to what I have said on the ground that I praise the conditions of life as they were in those days, but neglect to explain the reasons why our forefathers managed so well both in their relations with each other and in their government of the state. Well, I have already touched upon that question,[*] but in spite of that I shall now try to discuss it even more fully and more clearly.

The Athenians of that day were not watched over by many preceptors[*] during their boyhood only to be allowed to do what they liked when they attained to manhood;[*] on the contrary, they were subjected to greater supervision in the very prime of their vigor than when they were boys. For our forefathers placed such strong emphasis upon sobriety that they put the supervision of decorum in charge of the Council of the Areopagus—a body which was composed exclusively of men who were of noble birth[*] and had exemplified in their lives exceptional virtue and sobriety, and which, therefore, naturally excelled all the other councils of Hellas.

And we may judge what this institution was at that time even by what happens at the present day; for even now, when everything connected with the election and the examination of magistrates[*] has fallen into neglect, we shall find that those who in all else that they do are insufferable, yet when they enter the Areopagus hesitate to indulge their true nature, being governed rather by its traditions than by their own evil instincts. So great was the fear which its members inspired in the depraved and such was the memorial of their own virtue and sobriety which they left behind them in the place of their assembly.

Such, then, as I have described, was the nature of the Council which our forefathers charged with the supervision of moral discipline—a council which considered that those who believed that the best citizens are produced in a state where the laws are prescribed with the greatest exactness[*] were blind to the truth; for in that case there would be no reason why all of the Hellenes should not be on the same level, at any rate in so far as it is easy to borrow written codes from each other.

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;[*] 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.