"The truly wise man"[35] strives only for the welfare of the whole. He is "actuated neither by interest nor ambition, the love of honor nor the love of fame. [He knows no jealousy. He is not disquieted by the comparison of what he has attained with what others have attained, but by the comparison with what ought to be attained.] He has a duty indeed obliging him to seek the good of the whole; but that good is his only object. If that good be effected by another hand, he feels no disappointment. All men are his fellow laborers, but he is the rival of no man."[36] 3.--LAW I. _Looking to the general good, Godwin rejects law, not only for particular local and temporary conditions, but altogether._ "Law is an institution of the most pernicious tendency."[37] "The institution once begun, can never be brought to a close. No action of any man was ever the same as any other action, had ever the same degree of utility or injury. As new cases occur, the law is perpetually found deficient. It is therefore perpetually necessary to make new laws. The volume in which justice records her prescriptions is for ever increasing, and the world would not contain the books that might be written."[38] "The consequence of the infinitude of law is its uncertainty. Law was made that a plain man might know what he had to expect, and yet the most skilful practitioners differ about the event of my suit."[39] "A farther consideration is that it is of the nature of prophecy. Its task is to describe what will be the actions of mankind, and to dictate decisions respecting them."[40] "Law we sometimes call the wisdom of our ancestors. But this is a strange imposition. It was as frequently the dictate of their passion, of timidity, jealousy, a monopolizing spirit, and a lust of power that knew no bounds. Are we not obliged perpetually to revise and remodel this misnamed wisdom of our ancestors? to correct it by a detection of their ignorance, and a censure of their intolerance?"[41] "Legislation, as it has been usually understood, is not an affair of human competence. Reason is [our sole legislator, and her decrees are unchangeable and everywhere the same.]"[42] "Men cannot do more than declare and interpret law; nor can there be an authority so paramount, as to have the prerogative of making that to be law, which abstract and immutable justice had not made to be law previously to that interposition."[43]