[335] We have been obliged to insert two or three of these sentences between brackets, which are not found in the original, for the sake of showing the drift of the arguments of Philus. He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application. This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu. “Long,” says he, “before positive laws were instituted, the moral relations of justice were absolute and universal. To say that there were no justice or injustice but that which depends on the injunctions or prohibitions of positive laws, is to say that the radii which spring from a centre are not equal till we have formed a circle to illustrate the proposition. We must, therefore, acknowledge that the relations of equity were antecedent to the positive laws which corroborated them.” But though Philus was fully convinced of this, in order to give his friends Scipio and Lælius an opportunity of proving it, he frankly brings forward every argument for injustice that sophistry had ever cast in the teeth of reason.—By the original Translator.
[336] Here four pages are missing. The following sentence is preserved in Nonius.
[337] Two pages are missing here.
[338] Several pages are missing here.
[339] He means Alexander the Great.
[340] Six or eight pages are lost here.
[341] A great many pages are missing here.
[342] Six or eight pages are missing here.
[343] Several pages are lost here.
[344] This and the following chapters are not the actual words of Cicero, but quotations by Lactantius and Augustine of what they affirm that he said.