How infinitely Cicero must have risen above his time when he could have clean hands! A man in our days will keep himself clean from leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him.
Advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public opinion coerces us.

There is something too, we must suppose, in the lessons of Christianity.

Or it may be that the man of our day, with all these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance.

Even with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do it.

With the Romans, in the time of Cicero, greed, feeding itself on usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace.