[8] Cujacius, Brissonius, Hottomannus, &c. &c.--Vide _Gravina Orig. Jur. Civil._ pp. 132-38. edit. Lips. 1737. Leibnitz; a great mathematician as well as philosopher, declares that he knows nothing which approaches so near to the method and precision of geometry as the Roman law.--_Op._ tom. iv. p. 254. [9] Proavia juris civilis.--_De Jur. Bell. ac Pac. Proleg._ Sec. 16. [10] Dr. Paley, Princ. of Mor. and Polit. Philos. Pref. pp. xiv. and xv. [11] Grot. Jur. Bell. et Pac. Proleg. Sec. 40. [12] I do not mean to impeach the soundness of any part of Puffendorff's reasoning founded on moral entities. It may be explained in a manner consistent with the most just philosophy. He used, as every writer must do, the scientific language of his own time. I only assert that, to those who are unacquainted with ancient systems, his philosophical vocabulary is obsolete and unintelligible. [13] I cannot prevail on myself to pass over this subject without paying my humble tribute to the memory of Sir W. Jones, who has laboured so successfully in Oriental literature, whose fine genius, pure taste, unwearied industry, unrivalled and almost prodigious variety of acquirements, not to speak of his amiable manners and spotless integrity, must fill every one who cultivates or admires letters with reverence, tinged with a melancholy which the recollection of his recent death is so well adapted to inspire. I hope I shall be pardoned if I add my applause to the genius and learning of Mr. Maurice, who treads in the steps of his illustrious friend, and who has bewailed his death in a strain of genuine and beautiful poetry, not unworthy of happier periods of our English literature. [14] Especially those chapters of the third book, entitled, _Temperamentum circa Captivos_, &c. &c. [15] Natura enim juris explicanda est nobis, _eaque ab hominis repetenda natura_.--_Cic. de Leg._ lib i. c. 5. [16] Est autem virtus nihil aliud quam in se perfecta atque ad summum perducta natura.--_Cic. de Leg._ lib. i. c. 8. [17] Search's Light of Nature, by Abraham Tucker, esq., vol. i. pref. p. xxxiii. [18] Bacon, Dign. and Adv. of Learn. book ii. [19] See on this subject an incomparable fragment of the first book of Cicero's Economics, which is too long for insertion here, but which, if it be closely examined, may perhaps dispel the illusion of those gentlemen, who have so strangely taken it for granted, that Cicero was incapable of exact reasoning. [20] This progress is traced with great accuracy in some beautiful lines of Lucretius: