New Atlantis (utopian novel)

The Preface.

...resume that liberty which they had surrendered original: "parted with" before. "You take too much upon you," says the mutinous Korah A biblical figure who led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron; see Numbers 16:3.; "We do not want this man to reign" original Latin: Nolumus hunc regnare, says another agitator original: "incendiary". And so, although there are and always were laws to punish murder, rebellion, schism, theft, and so on in the case of a few individuals who cannot resist sovereign power, yet when the infection of disobedience original: "contagion" spreads through bad examples, people then become uncontrollable original: "masterless". At that point, personal will becomes the law, and treason is seen as reason; then liberty jostles against the sovereign's prerogative prerogative: the exclusive rights or powers of a monarch, and sometimes even pushes it out of the house.

Therefore, to use healthy laws to regulate the vast original: "enormous" ambition of the nobility original: "Noblesse" alongside the seditious complaints original: "gainsayings" of the always-grumbling original: "ever-querulous" common people—so that the whole state might be preserved without splitting into factions or fragments—has always been the skill and strategy of political wisdom original: "prudence".

Examine all commonwealths, and tell me where any were ever happy until good laws had first settled and united them: "A multitude can be unified into the body of one people by no other thing than by laws" original Latin: Multitudo coalescere in unius populi corpus nulla re quam legibus potest. From the Roman historian Livy.. Moses gave the law to the Hebrews; Zoroaster original: "Zoroastres," the prophet of ancient Persia. to the Bactrians; and Menes, Sesostris, and Amasis to the Egyptians. The laws of the Medes and Persians are famous for being unchangeable original: "irrevocability". All