ABSTRACT
The attitude of Secundus must perforce be uncritical: what "they" do in the City of Science is a mystery, the outcome is "magic". It is hard to believe that the individual's loss of confidence in his personal judgment can be without political consequences. Technology, that by-product of science which society at large regards as its end product, permits, nay commands, an accelerating pace of social change. Indirectly, science is a contributory influence to the dissolution of a juristic order. In the political realm, it is blatantly clear now that "the executive" is nothing like what John Locke imagined: he saw it as a power subordinate to the legislative, and as "seeing to" the execution of the laws. Precedent is the most ancient basis of law, and the safest. Public discussion is "law-minded" in wide terms, and indeed it is the business of law-making which the theoreticians of democracy have attributed to the people, either directly or mediated through their representatives.
