But it must be carefully observed that when we say that mankind may be ruled by one supreme prince, we do not mean that the most trifling judgments for each particular town are to proceed immediately from him. For municipal laws sometimes fail, and need guidance, as the Philosopher shows in his fifth book to Nicomachus, when he praises equity.[191] For nations and kingdoms and states have, each of them, certain peculiarities which must be regulated by different laws. For law is the rule which directs life. Thus the Scythians need one rule, for they live beyond the seventh climate,[192] and suffer cold which is almost unbearable, from the great inequality of their days and nights. But the Garamantes need a different law, for their country is equinoctial, and they cannot wear many clothes, from the excessive heat of the air, because the day is as long as the darkness of the night. But our meaning is that it is in those matters which are common to all men, that men should be ruled by one Monarch, and be governed by a rule common to them all, with a view to their peace. And the individual princes must receive this rule of life or law from him, just as the practical intellect receives its major premiss from the speculative intellect, under which it places its own particular premiss, and then draws its particular conclusion, with a view to action. And it is not only possible for one man to act as we have described; it is necessary that it should proceed from one man only to avoid confusion in our first principles. Moses himself wrote in his law that he had acted thus. For he took the elders of the tribes of the children of Israel, and left to them the lesser judgments, reserving to himself such as were more important, and wider in their scope; and the elders carried these wider ones to their tribes, according as they were applicable to each separate tribe. [Footnote 191: _Eth._ v. 14.--(W.)] [Footnote 192: Ptolemy, the mediæval authority on geography, divided the known world into [Greek: klimata], zones of slope towards the pole, or belts of latitude, eight of which from the equinoctial to the mouths of the Tanais and the Riphæan mountains. The seventh "clima" passed over the mouths of the Borysthenes. See Mercator's map in Bertius' _Theatrum Geographiæ Veteris_ (1618), art. "Ptolemy" in Smith's _Dictionary of Biography_, p. 577. Dictionary of Antiquities, art. "Clima."] Therefore it is better for the human race to be ruled by one than by many, and therefore there should be a Monarch, who is a single prince; and if it is better, it is more acceptable to God, since God always wills what is best. And since of these two ways of government the one is not only the better, but the best of all, it follows not only that this one is more acceptable to God as between one and many, but that it is the most acceptable. Therefore it is best for the human race to be governed by one man; and Monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world.