metal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so many
separate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for in
subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; they
put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, and
lengthen and disperse them. In sowing and retailing questions they make
the world fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as the
earth is made fertile by being crumbled and dug deep.

"Difficultatem facit doctrina."

["Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty."
--Quintilian, Insat. Orat., x. 3.]

We doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus and
Baldus. We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity of
opinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets.
I know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that so
many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be
understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not
so good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. We
open the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a
thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the
infinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same judgment
of the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactly
alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours.
I often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary has
disdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country,
like some horses that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothest
way.