, or against our will, and by any mode of
treatment, burning, bleeding, lowering, fattening, if he only proceeds
scientifically: so the true governor may reduce or fatten or bleed the
body corporate, while he acts according to the rules of his art, and
with a view to the good of the state, whether according to law or
without law.

'I do not like the notion, that there can be good government without
law.'

I must explain: Law-making certainly is the business of a king; and yet
the best thing of all is, not that the law should rule, but that the
king should rule, for the varieties of circumstances are endless, and no
simple or universal rule can suit them all, or last for ever. The law is
just an ignorant brute of a tyrant, who insists always on his commands
being fulfilled under all circumstances. 'Then why have we laws at all?'
I will answer that question by asking you whether the training master
gives a different discipline to each of his pupils, or whether he has a
general rule of diet and exercise which is suited to the constitutions
of the majority? 'The latter.' The legislator, too, is obliged to lay
down general laws, and cannot enact what is precisely suitable to each
particular case. He cannot be sitting at every man's side all his life,
and prescribe for him the minute particulars of his duty, and therefore
he is compelled to impose on himself and others the restriction of a
written law. Let me suppose now, that a physician or trainer, having
left directions for his patients or pupils, goes into a far country, and
comes back sooner than he intended; owing to some unexpected change in
the weather, the patient or pupil seems to require a different mode of
treatment: Would he persist in his old commands, under the idea that all
others are noxious and heterodox? Viewed in the light of science,
would not the continuance of such regulations be ridiculous? And if the
legislator, or another like him, comes back from a far country, is he to
be prohibited from altering his own laws? The common people say: Let a
man persuade the city first, and then let him impose new laws. But is a
physician only to cure his patients by persuasion, and not by force? Is
he a worse physician who uses a little gentle violence in effecting the
cure? Or shall we say, that the violence is just, if exercised by a rich
man, and unjust, if by a poor man? May not any man, rich or poor, with
or without law, and whether the citizens like or not, do