4p35c2sc.md (1103B)
1 What we have just shown is attested by experience so 2 conspicuously, that it is in the mouth of nearly everyone: "Man 3 is to man a God." Yet it rarely happens that men live in 4 obedience to reason, for things are so ordered among them, that 5 they are generally envious and troublesome one to another. 6 Nevertheless they are scarcely able to lead a solitary life, so 7 that the definition of man as a social animal has met with 8 general assent; in fact, men do derive from social life much 9 more convenience than injury. Let satirists then laugh their 10 fill at human affairs, let theologians rail, and let misanthropes 11 praise to their utmost the life of untutored rusticity, let them 12 heap contempt on men and praises on beasts; when all is said, 13 they will find that men can provide for their wants much more 14 easily by mutual help, and that only by uniting their forces can 15 they escape from the dangers that on every side beset them: not 16 to say how much more excellent and worthy of our knowledge it is, 17 to study the actions of men than the actions of beasts. But I 18 will treat of this more at length elsewhere. 19 20