180 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which 

 give little light because they are so high. For the lawyers, 

 they write according to the states where they live what is re 

 ceived law, and not what ought to be law; for the wisdom 

 of a law-maker is one, and of a lawyer is another. For there 

 are in nature certain fountains of justice whence all civil laws 

 are derived but as streams ; and like as waters do take tinctures 

 and tastes from the soils through which they run, so do civil 

 laws vary according to the regions and governments where they 

 are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains. 

 Again, the wisdom of a law-maker consisteth not only in a 

 platform of justice, but in the application thereof ; taking into 

 consideration by what means laws may be made certain, and 

 what are the causes and remedies of the doubtfulness and un 

 certainty of law ; by what means laws may be made apt and 

 easy to be executed, and what are the impediments and reme 

 dies in the execution of laws ; what influence laws touching 

 private right of meum and tuum have into the public state, and 

 how they may be made apt and agreeable ; how laws are to be 



Enned and delivered, whether in texts or in Acts, brief or 

 rge, with preambles or without ; how they are to be pruned 

 and reformed from time to time, and what is the best means to 

 keep them from being too vast in volume, or too full of multi 

 plicity and crossness ; how they are to be expounded, when 

 upon causes emergent and judicially discussed, and when upon 

 responses and conferences touching general points or questions ; 

 how they are to be pressed, rigorously or tenderly ; how they 

 are to be mitigated by equity and good conscience, and whether 

 discretion and strict law are to be mingled in the same courts, 

 or kept apart in several courts ; again, how the practice, pro 

 fession, and erudition of law is to be censured and governed ; 

 and many other points touching the administration and (as I 

 may term it) animation of laws. Upon which I insist the less, 

 because I purpose (if God give me leave), having begun a work 

 of this nature in aphorisms, to propound it hereafter, noting it 

 in the meantime for deficient. 



(50) And for your Majesty s laws of England, I could say 

 much of their dignity, and somewhat of their defect ; but they 

 cannot but excel the civil laws in fitness for the government, 

 for the civil law was non hos quccsitum munus in iisus ; it Avas 

 not made for the countries which it governeth. Hereof I cease 

 to speak because I will not intermingle matter of action with 

 matter of general learning. 



XXIV. Thus have I concluded this portion of learning 

 touching civil knowledge ; and with civil knowledge have con 



