The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter XI
Why we have preferred books of liberal learning
to books of law
That lucrative practice of positive law, designed for the
dispensation of earthly things, the more useful it is found
by the children of this world, so much the less does it aid
the children of light in comprehending the mysteries of holy
writ and the secret sacraments of the faith, seeing that it
disposes us peculiarly to the friendship of the world, by
which man, as S. James testifies, is made the enemy of God.
Law indeed encourages rather than extinguishes the
contentions of mankind, which are the result of unbounded
greed, by complicated laws, which can be turned either way;
though we know that it was created by jurisconsults and
pious princes for the purpose of assuaging these
contentions. But in truth, as the same science deals with
contraries, and the power of reason can be used to opposite
ends, and at the same the human mind is more inclined to
evil, it happens with the practicers of this science that
they usually devote themselves to promoting contention
rather than peace, and instead of quoting laws according to
the intent of the legislator, violently strain the language
thereof to effect their own purposes.
Wherefore, although the over-mastering love of books has
possessed our mind from boyhood, and to rejoice in their
delights has been our only pleasure, yet the appetite for
the books of the civil law took less hold of our affections,
and we have spent but little labour and expense in acquiring
volumes of this kind. For they are useful only as the
scorpion in treacle, as Aristotle, the sun of science, has
said of logic in his book De Pomo. We have noticed a
certain manifest difference of nature between law and
science, in that every science is delighted and desires to
open its inward parts and display the very heart of its
principles, and to show forth the roots from which it buds
and flourishes, and that the emanation of its springs may be
seen of all men; for thus from the cognate and harmonious
light of the truth of conclusion to principles, the whole
body of science will be full of light, having no part dark.
But laws, on the contrary, since they are only human
enactments for the regulation of social life, or the yokes
of princes thrown over the necks of their subjects, refuse
to be brought to the standard of synteresis, the origin of
equity, because they feel that they possess more of
arbitrary will than rational judgment. Wherefore the
judgment of the wise for the most part is that the causes of
laws are not a fit subject of discussion. In truth, many
laws acquire force by mere custom, not by syllogistic
necessity, like the arts: as Aristotle, the Phoebus of the
Schools, urges in the second book of the Politics, where he
confutes the policy of Hippodamus, which holds out rewards
to the inventors of new laws, because to abrogate old laws
and establish new ones is to weaken the force of those which
exist. For whatever receives its stability from use alone
must necessarily be brought to nought by disuse.
From which it is seen clearly enough, that as laws are
neither arts nor sciences, so books of law cannot properly
be called books of art or science. Nor is this faculty which
we may call by a special term geologia, or the
earthly science, to be properly numbered among the
sciences. Now the books of the liberal arts are so useful to
the divine writings, that without their aid the intellect
would vainly aspire to understand them.
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- The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter X
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