New Atlantis (utopian novel)

regulators, proposal-mongers, reformists, and so on, so that I may well ask here, as was once asked regarding the rapid increase of the English Jesuit seminaries Colleges established abroad to train English Catholic priests during the Reformation:

Who will provide the rope they have deserved? original: "Quis funem quem meruere dabit?"

But I correct myself as well as them. For though our laws are generally good and just, yet according to Aristotle's rule, "laws relate to specific cases as universals relate to particulars" original: "leges habent se ut universalia ad particularia". In particular cases and circumstances occurring after the laws were made (for all things are not seen at first glance original: "primo intuitu"), they may be, and sometimes are, very deficient. So, to correct the rigor of a positive law—which cannot always carry the same curve original: "Bias"; a metaphor from the game of lawn bowls on every playing field original: "green" and from every hand—the fairness or equity original: "ἐπιεικεία" (epieikeia); a Greek legal concept regarding the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law of it, which considers the time, place, person, and other comparative circumstances more fully, may be useful.

However, this is only so long as the "Lesbian rule" A flexible lead ruler used by ancient Greek stonemasons on the island of Lesbos to measure curved surfaces; used here as a metaphor for flexible justice of equity is not made to bow and incline to the rough stone; for then, as that Prince of Philosophers Aristotle compares it well, it proves to be nothing but a leaden rule. Thus, upon just grounds, as Plato tells us, in all commonwealths there ought to be some changes—that is, by repealing old laws and enacting new ones. But then with this condition original: "Proviso": the statesmen must behave themselves like