"Homo sum—humani nihil a me alienum puto:" [1]
for (he continues) "all men by nature love one another, and desire an intercourse of words and action". Hence spring the family affections, friendship, and social ties; hence also that general love of combination, which forms a striking feature of the present age, resulting in clubs, trades-unions, companies, and generally in what Mr. Carlyle terms "swarmery".
[Footnote 1: "I am a man—I hold that nothing which concerns mankind can be matter of unconcern to me".]
Next to truth, justice is the great duty of mankind. Cicero at once condemns "communism" in matters of property. Ancient immemorial seizure, conquest, or compact, may give a title; but "no man can say that he has anything his own by a right of nature". Injustice springs from avarice or ambition, the thirst of riches or of empire, and is the more dangerous as it appears in the more exalted spirits, causing a dissolution of all ties and obligations. And here he takes occasion to instance "that late most shameless attempt of Caesar's to make himself master of Rome".
There is, besides, an injustice of omission. You may wrong your neighbour by seeing him wronged without interfering. Cicero takes the opportunity of protesting strongly against the selfish policy of those lovers of ease and peace, who, "from a desire of furthering their own interests, or else from a churlish temper, profess that they mind nobody's business but their own, in order that they may seem to be men of strict integrity and to injure none", and thus shrink from taking their part in "the fellowship of life". He would have had small patience with our modern doctrine of non-intervention and neutrality in nations any more than in men. Such conduct arises (he says) from the false logic with which men cheat their conscience; arguing reversely, that whatever is the best policy is—honesty.
There are two ways, it must be remembered, in which one man may injure another—force and fraud; but as the lion is a nobler creature than the fox, so open violence seems less odious than secret villany. No character is so justly hateful as
"A rogue in grain,
Veneered with sanctimonious theory".
Nations have their obligations as well as individuals, and war has its laws as well as peace. The struggle should be carried on in a generous temper, and not in the spirit of extermination, when "it has sometimes seemed a question between two hostile nations, not which should remain a conqueror, but which should remain a nation at all".
No mean part of justice consists in liberality, and this, too, has its duties. It is an important question, how, and when, and to whom, we should give? It is possible to be generous at another person's expense: it is possible to injure the recipient by mistimed liberality; or to ruin one's fortune by open house and prodigal hospitality. A great man's bounty (as he says in another place) should be a common sanctuary for the needy. "To ransom captives and enrich the meaner folk is a nobler form of generosity than providing wild beasts or shows of gladiators to amuse the mob". Charity should begin at home; for relations and friends hold the first place in our affections; but the circle of our good deeds is not to be narrowed by the ties of blood, or sect, or party, and "our country comprehends the endearments of all". We should act in the spirit of the ancient law—"Thou shalt keep no man from the running stream, or from lighting his torch at thy hearth". Our liberality should be really liberal,—like that charity which Jeremy Taylor describes as "friendship to all the world".
Another component principle of this honour is courage, or "greatness of soul", which (continues Cicero) has been well defined by the Stoics as "a virtue contending for justice and honesty"; and its noblest form is a generous contempt for ordinary objects of ambition, not "from a vain or fantastic humour, but from solid principles of reason". The lowest and commoner form of courage is the mere animal virtue of the fighting-cock.