You will notice, besides, that the sins repeatedly punished are the sins repeatedly committed. Your father31 within five years had more men sewed up in the sack32 than, by all accounts, there had been victims of the sack throughout all time. Children ventured much less often to incur the supreme sin so long as the crime lay outside the pale of the law. For by supreme wisdom the men of the highest distinction and of the deepest insight into the ways of nature chose rather to ignore the outrage as one incredible and passing the bounds of boldness, than by punishing it to point out the possibility of its being done; and so the crime of parricide began with the law against it, and punishment showed children the way to the deed; filial piety was truly at its lowest ebb after the sack became a more common sight than the cross. In that state in which men are rarely punished a sympathy for uprightness is formed, and encouragement is given to this virtue as to a common good. Let a state think itself blameless, and it will be so; its anger against those who depart from the general sobriety will be greater if it sees that they are few. Believe me, it is dangerous to show a state in how great a majority evil men are.