12.9
For they whose toils root out whatever is base and froward from mind and body and make desire for virtue to flourish in their place—they are the best, since they will not brook injustice to their own city nor injury to its soil.
12.10
Some say that it is not right to love hunting, because it may lead to neglect of one’s domestic affairs. They are not aware that all who benefit their cities and their friends are more attentive to their domestic affairs than other men.
12.11
Therefore, if keen sportsmen fit themselves to be useful to their country in matters of vital moment, neither will they be remiss in their private affairs: for the state is necessarily concerned both in the safety and in the ruin of the individual’s domestic fortunes. Consequently such men as these save the fortunes of every other individual as well as their own.
12.12
But many of those who talk in this way, blinded by jealousy, choose to be ruined through their own evil rather than be saved by other men’s virtue. For most pleasures are evil, and by yielding to these they are encouraged either to say or to do what is wrong.
12.13
Then by their frivolous words they make enemies, and by their evil deeds bring diseases and losses and death on themselves, their children and their friends, being without perception of the evils, but more perceptive than others of the pleasures. Who would employ these to save a state?
12.14
From these evils, however, everyone who loves that which I recommend will hold aloof, since a good education teaches a man to observe laws, to talk of righteousness and hear of it.
12.15
Those, then, who have given themselves up to continual toil and learning hold for their own portion laborious lessons and exercises, but they hold safety for their cities. But if any decline to receive instruction because of the labour and prefer to live among untimely pleasures, they are by nature utterly evil.
