“Laws are maintained in credit, not because they are essentially just, but because they are laws. It is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have none other.”

Brilliant! The sheeple always bind themselves with 'credit' from a mystical authority.

Like they do with their faith and finances.

This is the entire premise of the Criminal Activity known as the Federal Reserve System

I think you are all drinking something and I resent being left out of the party.

When everything is illegal, we're all criminals. Who better to control us than a jailor?

Laws are made up by men -- and paid for with blood. Man's laws are considered sacred yet need to be enforced, while nature's laws are usually rejected immediately yet require no enforcement from humankind. When people are ready to live in accordance with natural law (whatever that may be) then perhaps there will be peace. But I wouldn't hold your breath -- humankind has not even come close in 10,000 years...

Five stars for accuracy, a thumbs down for the prideful ignorant that perpetuates the mystical, despotism, and tyrannical theocracies. When codes, ordinances, regulations, rule, statutes, etc. are called law, ignorance and tyranny flourish.

Here's the scary part, those yahoos in Washington are passing new laws every day and most of them only make matters worse. A great example is our drug laws that make drugs more available to children, enrich thugs world wide, increase crime in our streets, fill our jails with non violent people and corrupt law enforcement agencies. LEAP.CC

...and at a cost of over 70 billion per year.

Law is reflection of those it protects - if those it protects are rogues so shall the law be. RBE

Jim k------not so scary if you take it in stride but right on to the rest of it. They need laws to make criminals to justify more for their budgets. Nice little scam that violates freedom of choice like prohibition did and is the same method used on firearm rights. Make criminals out of the law abiding so they can convict them and hobble their 2nd Amendment rights for life by denying the right to bear arms ever again. Take the right and now new justification for bigger enforcement budgets. I wonder why, after a prohibition conviction, upon release from jail, they didn't take away the right to bear a bottle for life. Oh yes, I forgot. Firearms kill more in the U.S. than alcohol does or ever did, LoL. At least that's what anti-rights people would have you believe.

Michel de Montaigne, an extremely complex individual. His insights and broad overviews are still applicable and needed today with the world facing such external and internal conflicts of state and religious matters. 
"Neither my anecdotes nor my quotations are always employed simply as examples, for authority, or for ornament... They often carry, off the subject under discussion, the seed of a richer ad more daring matter, and they resonate obliquely with a more delicate tone." Michel de Montaigne. 
The seed planted, the word "mystical" from a stoic perspective perhaps leaning to Montaigne's understanding of "natural law" he of course the "courtier" between and during the "wars of religion" in France. Respected by both, Catholics and Protestants. A man groomed for a purpose, whose education was very well thought out. Volumes could be written upon this very subject, pertaining to the current state of affairs engulfing this world.