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 practisers
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.