_P._ The definition is good, and yet it is Aristotle’s. What is the definition agreed upon as a principle in the science of the common law? _L._ The same with that of Aristotle. _P._ See, you lawyers, how much you are beholden to the philosopher; and it is but reason; for the more general and noble science and law of all the world, is true philosophy, of which the common law of England is a very little part. _L._ It is so, if you mean by philosophy nothing but the study of reason; as I think you do. _P._ When you say that justice gives to every man his own, what mean you by his own? How can that be given me, which is my own already? Or, if it be not my own, how can justice make it mine? _L._ Without law, every thing is in such sort every man’s, as he may take, possess, and enjoy, without wrong to any man; every thing, lands, beasts, fruits, and even the bodies of other men, if his reason tell him he cannot otherwise live securely. For the dictates of reason are little worth, if they tended not to the preservation and improvement of men’s lives. Seeing then without human law all things would be common, and this community a cause of encroachment, envy, slaughter, and continual war of one upon another, the same law of reason dictates to mankind, for their own preservation, a distribution of lands and goods, that each man may know what is proper to him, so as none other might pretend a right thereunto, or disturb him in the use of the same. This distribution is justice, and this properly is the same which we say is one’s own; by which you may see the great necessity there was of statute laws, for preservation of all mankind. It is also a dictate of the law of reason, that statute laws are a necessary means of the safety and well-being of man in the present world, and are to be obeyed by all subjects, as the law of reason ought to be obeyed, both by King and subjects, because it is the law of God. _P._ All this is very rational; but how can any laws secure one man from another, when the greatest part of men are so unreasonable, and so partial to themselves as they are, and the laws of themselves are but a dead letter, which of itself is not able to compel a man to do otherwise than himself pleaseth, nor punish or hurt him when he hath done a mischief?