But the reason, according to Doña Oliva, wherefore the place of punishment for sinful souls has been appointed in the centre of this our habitable earth, is this; the soul being in its essence lighter than air, fire, or any of the ten spheres, has its natural place in the Empyreum or Heaven of Heavens, where the Celestial Court is fixed, and whither it would naturally ascend when set free from the body, as to its natural and proper place of rest. The punishment therefore is appropriately appointed in the place which is most remote from its native region, and most repugnant to its own nature, the pain therefore must needs be _fort et dure_ which it endures when confined within that core of the earth, to which all things that are heaviest gravitate. In these fancies she only followed or applied the received opinions of the middle ages. A more remarkable part of her works, considering the time and place in which they were composed, is a Colloquy[1] upon the means by which the World and the Governments thereof might be improved. Having in her former treatises laid down a better system for treating the infirmities of the human microcosm, she enters nothing loth, and nothing doubting her own capacity, upon the maladies of the body politic. [Footnote 1: _Colloquio de las Cosas que mejoraran este Mundo y sus Republicas._] The first evils which occurred to her were those of the law, its uncertainty and its delays by which properties were wasted, families ruined and hearts broken. What barbarity it is, she says, that a cause should continue forty years in the Courts! that one Counsellor should tell you the right is on your side, and another should say the same thing to your adversary; that one decision should be given in one place, and another to revoke it in that; and in a third a different one from either, and all three perhaps equally wide of the truth and justice of the case, and yet each such as can be maintained by legal arguments, and supported by legal authorities! The cause of all this she ascribes to the multiplicity of laws and of legal books, which were more than enough to load twenty carts, and yet more were continually added, and all were in Latin. Could any folly exceed that of those lawgivers who presumed to prescribe laws for all possible contingencies, and for the whole course of future generations! She was therefore for reducing the written laws to a few fundamentals in the vernacular tongue, and leaving every thing else to be decided by men of good conscience and sincere understanding; by which the study of jurisprudence as a science would be abolished, and there might be an end to those numerous costly professorships for which so many chairs and universities had been founded. Ten short commandments comprised the law of God; but human laws by their number and by the manner in which they were administered occasioned more hurt to the souls of men