The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when every one has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business.
The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.
The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.
The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages.
The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.
The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.
Xenophanes states that the fire in Lipara once failed for sixteen years, but returned in the seventeenth year. They say that the lava-stream in Etna is neither flaming nor continuous, but returns only after an interval of many years.