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[21]
5. Well then, for a man to take something from1
his neighbour and to profit by his neighbour's loss is
more contrary to Nature than is death or poverty or
pain or anything else that can affect either our person or our property. For, in the first place, injustice
is fatal to social life and fellowship between man
and man. For, if we are so disposed that each, to
gain some personal profit, will defraud or injure his
neighbour, then those bonds of human society, which
are most in accord with Nature's laws, must of
necessity be broken.
1 Wrongful gains are against the laws: (1) of nature,
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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