obligation to make use of as their guides; as where the people of
Israel are commanded to "take wise men, and understanding, and
known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them." The six
then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate, not by
hereditary right, or in regard of the greatness of their estates
only, which would tend to such power as might force or draw the
people, but by election for their excellent parts, which tends to
the advancement of the influence of their virtue or authority
that leads the people. Wherefore the office of the senate is not
to be commanders, but counsellors, of the people; and that which
is proper to counsellors is first to debate, and afterward to
give advice in the business whereupon they have debated, whence
the decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called; and
these being maturely framed, it is their duty to propose in the
case to the people. Wherefore the senate is no more than the
debate of the commonwealth. But to debate is to discern or put a
difference between things that, being alike, are not the same; or
it is separating and weighing this reason against that, and that
reason against this, which is dividing.

The senate then having divided, who shall choose? Ask the
girls: for if she that divided must have chosen also, it had been
little worse for the other in case she had not divided at all,
but kept the whole cake to herself, in regard that being to
choose, too, she divided accordingly. Wherefore if the senate
have any further power than to divide, the commonwealth can never
be equal. But in a commonwealth consisting of a single council,
there is no other to choose than that which divided; whence it
is, that such a council fails not to scramble -- that is, to be
factious, there being no other dividing of the cake in that case