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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Perspicuity. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 10.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Perspicuity.

“The manner in which the composition of laws is in this respect performed, is such as would seem to indicate it to have been performed, either in derision or insult of the mind’s weakness, or in the infinite presumption of its strength.

“Yet prolixity, any more than redundancy, whatever certain persons may find it convenient to suppose, is no more the necessary attribute of the science of jurisprudence, than that of any other science.

“If there had been anything more to be gotten in physic and divinity by writing nonsense in long sentences—long sentences would, without doubt, have been written by doctors and divines.”

“Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many necessary ones in a sentence; as a workman may be overladen not only with rubbish, which is of no use for him to carry, but with materials the most useful and necessary, when heaped up in loads too heavy for him at once. The point is therefore to distribute the materials of the several divisions of the fabric into parcels that may be portable without fatigue.

“There is a limit to the lifting powers of each man, beyond which all attempts only charge him with a burthen to him immoveable.

“There is in the like manner a limit to the grasping power of man’s apprehension, beyond which if you add article to article; the whole shrinks from under his utmost efforts. In no science is this limit more necessary to be consulted, in none has it been so utterly unattended to.”