Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.


The essays of Michel de Montaigne (ed. Lane, Allen, 1991)


Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and...

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and...

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and...

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and...