This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[68]
What is the purpose of these illustrations? To
let you see that our forefathers did not countenance
sharp practice.
17. Now the law disposes of sharp practices in1
one way, philosophers in another: the law deals with
them as far as it can lay its strong arm upon them;
philosophers, as far as they can be apprehended by
reason and conscience. Now reason demands that
nothing be done with unfairness, with false pretence,
or with misrepresentation. Is it not deception,
then, to set snares, even if one does not mean to
start the game or to drive it into them? Why, wild
creatures often fall into snares undriven and unpursued. Could one in the same way advertise a house
for sale, post up a notice “To be sold,” like a snare,
and have somebody run into it unsuspecting?
1 Law vs. philosophy in dealing with knavery.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.