ion of {15}
spirit_: but who believes it, till Death tells it us? It was Death,
which, opening the conscience of Charles the fifth, made him enjoin his
son Philip to restore Navarre; and King Francis the first of France, to
command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the
Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected.
It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself.
He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles
them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to
hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich and
proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but
in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes
of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and
rottenness, and they acknowledge it.

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded; what none hath dared thou hast done; and whom all the world
hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised.
Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the
pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these
two narrow words, _Hic jacet_.

(_History of the World_.)

{16}

RICHARD HOOKER 1554-1600

THE LAW OF NATIONS

Now besides that law which simply concerneth men as men, and that which
belongeth unto them as they are men linked with others in some form of
politic society, there is a third kind of law which toucheth all such
several bodies politic, so far forth as one of them hath public
commerce with another. And this third is the Law of Nations. Between
men and beasts there is no possibility of social communion, because the
well-spring of that communion is a natural delight which man hath to
transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into
himself especially those things wherein the excellency of his kind doth
most consist. The chiefest instrument of human communion therefore is
speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another the conceits
of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause seeing beasts are
not hereof capable, forasmuch as with them we can use no such
conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on
earth to whom nature hath denied sense, yet lower than to be sociable
companions of man to whom nature hath given reason; it is