come, there shall one be found that,
in this vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shall
so tally with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched with
it that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will
require a diverse judgment. There is little relation betwixt our
actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws;
the most to be desired are those that are the most rare, the most simple
and general; and I am even of opinion that we had better have none at all
than to have them in so prodigious a number as we have.

Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;
witness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state wherein
we see nations live who have no other. Some there are, who for their
only judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains,
to determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose out
some one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies. What
danger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determine
ours, according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation of
example and consequence? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand,
sending colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should not
carry along with them any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest 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 (confus