The Essays, vol 19 | Page 5

suits should get footing in that new world, as
being a science in its own nature, breeder of altercation and division;
judging with Plato, "that lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of
a country."
Whence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for all
other uses, becomes obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts?
and that he who so clearly expresses himself in whatever else he speaks
or writes, cannot find in these any way of declaring himself that does
not fall into doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes of that
art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull out portentous
words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighed every
syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirking connection that
they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of figures and
minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule or prescription,
nor any certain intelligence:
"Confusum est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est."
["Whatever is beaten into powder is undistinguishable (confused)."
--Seneca, Ep., 89.]
As you see children trying to bring a mass of quicksilver to a certain
number of parts, the more they press and work it and endeavour to
reduce it to their own will, the more they irritate the liberty of this
generous metal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so
many separate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for in

subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; they
put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, and
lengthen and disperse them. In sowing and retailing questions they
make the world fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as
the earth is made fertile by being crumbled and dug deep.
"Difficultatem facit doctrina."
["Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty." --Quintilian, Insat. Orat., x. 3.]
We doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus
and Baldus. We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity of
opinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets. I
know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that so
many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be
understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not so
good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. We
open the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a
thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the
infinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same
judgment of the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions
exactly alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse
hours. I often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary
has disdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even
country, like some horses that I have known, that make most trips in
the smoothest way.
Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since
there's no book to be found, either human or divine, which the world
busies itself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation.
The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty
and perplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed amongst
ourselves: "This book has enough; there is now no more to be said
about it"? This is most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law
to infinite doctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do
we find any end of the need of interpretating? is there, for all that, any
progress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any
fewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in

its first infancy? On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we
can no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and
barriers. Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does
nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and
perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;
"Mus in pice."--[" A mouse in a pitch barrel."]--It thinks it discovers at
a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth:
but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new
inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the
motion: not much unlike AEsop's dogs, that seeing something like a
dead body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set to
work to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so choked
themselves. To which what one Crates'