🚀 go-pugleaf

it no
longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or
justice. Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of
reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are
principles natural to man.

It would, therefore, be right to obey laws and customs, because they are
laws; but we should know that there is neither truth nor justice to
introduce into them, that we know nothing of these, and so must follow what
is accepted. By this means we would never depart from them. But people
cannot accept this doctrine; and, as they believe that truth can be found,
and that it exists in law and custom, they believe them and take their
antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not simply of their authority apart
from truth. Thus they obey laws, but they are liable to revolt when these
are proved to be valueless; and this can be shown of all, looked at from a
certain aspect.

326. Injustice.--It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are
unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it
is necessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because
they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just,
but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented, if
this can be made intelligible and it be understood what is the proper
definition of justice.

327. The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance,
which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet. The
first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at
birth. The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having
run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back
again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned
ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the two, who have
departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have
so