26. Perhaps some man, who sees all these precepts of nature derived by a certain artifice from the single dictate of reason advising us to look to the preservation and safeguard of ourselves, will say that the deduction of these laws is so hard, that it is not to be expected they will be vulgarly known, and therefore neither will they prove obliging: for laws, if they be not known, oblige not, nay indeed, are not laws. To this I answer, it is true, that hope, fear, anger, ambition, covetousness, vain glory, and other perturbations of mind, do hinder a man, so as he cannot attain to the knowledge of these laws whilst those passions prevail in him: but there is no man who is not sometimes in a quiet mind. At that time therefore there is nothing easier for him to know, though he be never so rude and unlearned, than this only rule, that when he doubts whether what he is now doing to another may be done by the law of nature or not, he conceive himself to be in that other’s stead. Here instantly those perturbations which persuaded him to the fact, being now cast into the other scale, dissuade him as much. And this rule is not only easy, but is anciently celebrated in these words, _quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris_: _do not that to others, you would not have done to yourself_. [Sidenote: The laws of nature oblige only in the court of conscience.] 27. But because most men, by reason of their perverse desire of present profit, are very unapt to observe these laws, although acknowledged by them; if perhaps some, more humble than the rest, should exercise that equity and usefulness which reason dictates, the others not practising the same, surely they would not follow reason in so doing: nor would they hereby procure themselves peace, but a more certain quick destruction, and the keepers of the law become a mere prey to the breakers of it. It is not therefore to be imagined, that by nature, that is, by reason, men are obliged to the exercise of all these laws[7] in that state of men wherein they are not practised by others. We are obliged yet, in the interim, to a readiness of mind to observe them, whensoever their observation shall seem to conduce to the end for which they were ordained. We must therefore conclude, that the law of nature doth always and everywhere oblige in the internal court, or that of conscience; but not always in the external court, but then only when it may be done with safety. Footnote 7: