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Rh to principles, the whole body of science will be full of light, having no part dark. But laws, on the contrary, since they are only human enactments for the regulation of social life, or the yokes of princes thrown over the necks of their subjects, refuse to be brought to the standard of synteresis, the origin of equity, because they feel that they possess more of arbitrary will than rational judgment. Wherefore the judgment of the wise for the most part is that the causes of laws are not a fit subject of discussion. In truth, many laws acquire force by mere custom, not by syllogistic necessity, like the arts: as Aristotle, the Phœbus of the Schools, urges in the second book of the Politics, where he confutes the policy of Hippodamus, which holds out rewards to the inventors of new laws, because to abrogate old laws and establish new ones is to weaken the force of those which exist. For whatever receives its stability from use alone must necessarily be brought to nought by disuse.

From which it is seen clearly enough, that as laws are neither arts nor sciences, so books of law cannot properly be called books of art or science. Nor is this faculty which we may call by a special term geologia, or the earthly science, to be properly