This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[21]
In view of rendering them worthy or
unworthy of credit, the method of procedure is exactly the same as in the case
of witnesses; for contracts are trustworthy according to the character of their
signatories or depositaries. When the existence of the contract is admitted, if
it is in our favor, we must strengthen it by asserting that the contract is a
law, special and partial; and it is not the contracts that make the law
authoritative, but it is the laws that give force to legal contracts. And in a
general sense the law itself is a kind of contract, so that whoever disobeys or
subverts a contract, subverts the laws.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Aristotle. Cambridge and London. Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.