They have assembled many thousands of scattered
people into one body: it is true, they have done so, they have
brought them together into cities to cozen, and into armies to
murder one another; they found them hunters and fishers of wild
creatures, they have made them hunters and fishers of their
brethren; they boast to have reduced them to a state of peace, when
the truth is they have only taught them an art of war; they have
framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of vice,
but they raised first that devil which now they conjure and cannot
bind; though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet
there was less committed because there were no rewards for it. But
the men who praise philosophy from this topic are much deceived; let
oratory answer for itself, the tinkling, perhaps, of that may unite
a swarm: it never was the work of philosophy to assemble
multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them when they were
assembled, to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as
is possible, to unity again. Avarice and ambition only were the
first builders of towns, and founders of empire; they said, "Go to,
let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven,
and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face
of the earth.
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