or in
other advantages which are either accidental, or are the result rather
of the secondary than of the highest faculties of the mind.--But these
reflections, while they moderate the pride of invention, and dispel the
extravagant conceit of superior illumination, yet serve to prove the
use, and indeed the necessity, of composing, from time to time, new
systems of science adapted to the opinions and language of each
succeeding period. Every age must be taught in its own language. If a
man were now to begin a discourse on ethics with an account of the
"_moral entities_" of Puffendorff,[12] he would speak an unknown
tongue.

It is not, however, alone as a mere translation of former writers into
modern language that a new system of public law seems likely to be
useful. The age in which we live possesses many advantages which are
peculiarly favourable to such an undertaking. Since the composition of
the great works of Grotius and Puffendorff, a more modest, simple, and
intelligible philosophy has been introduced into the schools; which has
indeed been grossly abused by sophists, but which, from the time of
Locke, has been cultivated and improved by a succession of disciples
worthy of their illustrious master. We are thus enabled to discuss with
precision, and to explain with clearness, the principles of the science
of human nature, which are in themselves on a level with the capacity of
every man of good sense, and which only appeared to be abstruse from
the unprofitable subtleties with which they were loaded, and the
barbarous jargon in which they were expressed. The deepest doctrines of
morality have since that time been treated in the perspicuous and
popular style, and with some degree of the beauty and eloquence of the
ancient moralists. That philosophy on which are founded the principles
of our duty, if it has not become more certain (for morality admits no
discoveries), is at least less "harsh and crabbed," less obscure and
haughty in its language, less forbidding and disgusting in its
appearance, than in the days of our ancestors. If this progress of
learning towards popularity has engendered (as it must be owned that it
has) a multitude of superficial and most mischievous sciolists, the
antidote must come from the same quarter with the disease. Popular
reason can alone correct popular sophistry.

Nor is this the only advantage which a writer of the present age would
possess over the celebrated jurists of the las