All laws, written and unwritten, have need of interpretation. The unwritten law of Nature, though it be easy to such as, without partiality and passion, make use of their natural reason, and therefore leaves the violators thereof without excuse; yet considering there be very few, perhaps none, that in some cases are not blinded by self-love or some other passion, it is now become of all laws the most obscure, and has consequently the greatest need of able interpreters. The written laws, if they be short, are easily misinterpreted, from the divers significations of a word or two: if long, they be more obscure by the divers significations of many words: insomuch as no written law, delivered in few or many words, can be well understood, without a perfect understanding of the final causes for which the law was made, the knowledge of which final causes is in the legislator. To him therefore there cannot be any knot in the law insoluble; either by finding out the ends, to undo it by; or else by making what ends he will, as Alexander did with his sword in the Gordian knot, by the legislative power, which no other interpreter can do.