★ Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
---page break---
Erroneous division. it's Source, and consequences.
or [expressly] establish, are [not only different but] contradictory & inconsistent.
The Division I mean is that into Divine Law, Natural Law, Law of Revelation, Law of Nature and
Law, Positive or Municipal.
Were I to be asked for a Definition of the a State of Nature, I could not give
a clearer or more characteristic definition of it, than this, that it was the State in
which Mankind were in, while there was no Law. And yet the practice of speaking of
that State as having a Law, a Law too that is to controul and perplex the operation
of Positive and real Laws, is become so inveterate, that to deny it's existence contest - the propriety
of the appellation, must at first sight fear the appearance of nothing a captious refinement logomachy flattered with the title of the Legislator of Mankind, they have called the cobweb production of their own mind the Laws of Nature.
It is an obvious very true It is very true & has often been observed that an observation judged that is very true & has been often made obj observation and nothing can n there can not be a truer one, than this
is nothing in words that appropriates them more to one Idea than another
& that the Ideas of 2 Terms which we respectively employ to express by the words Ideas of a square &
circle The one, if custom had so order'd it, might as well have stood for the Idea
by the other, as for that which it denotes at present — Thus much never to be
and that therefore that to compare in the application of in considering a single term as applied singly to to a single
Idea it can never be said to be erroneous and improper. But the case becomes All this is very true.
far different, when after a term has been long originally appropriated to a given Idea,
it becomes afterwards applied to another which is not only distinct but opposite
[when as if the same term were applied indiscriminately to both square and Circle.]
it may then strictly be termed called erroneous, because by the necessity it introduces imports
of perpetually counfounding distinct Ideas, making a man appear to say one thing while he means another that should he distrust it frustrates all the ends of languages —
|
Identifier: | JB/096/108/002"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 96. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
096 |
legislation |
||
|
108 |
introd. laws civil & criminal |
||
|
002 |
division - all laws penal |
||
|
text sheet |
1 |
||
|
recto |
f10 |
||
|
jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::[gr with crown] [britannia with shield motif]]] |
||
|
31112 |
|||
