| There is great incompatibility between reason and experience in Montesqueiu's philosophy of law. The incompatibility not only appears in the natural law within which there is a contradiction between the transcendent "relations of justice" and "naturalistic principle of justice", but also exists in the insistent standards of the positive law, which are based on the natural law in some cases and "the spirit of the laws" that is the natural and social conditions with which the positive laws connected in others. This dissertation tries to understand the contradiction in the philosophical tradition of Montesquieu and indicates that the contradiction is also relative to the problems with which Montesquieu dealed.If we, from the viewpoint of tension between the reason and the experience, contemplate the spirit of the laws, we'll apprehend that all these contradictions originate from those among the values. The latent purpose that Montesquieu tried to keep the tension between the reason and the experience is to keep counterpoise among the values.In my view, Montesquieu's intention fell on the supreme status of the legislator finally. Because the legislator's task is just to deal with the problems of contradictions among values.But only in the concrete circumstance did the contradictions among the values appear completely. So the legislator's task is to reflect the relations among the values according to "the spirit of the laws" and to deal with the contradictions among the values by several means. Montesquieu specially emphasized that legislator should, according to the "spirit of moderation", deal with these contradictions in concrete circumstances. Because of the incompatibility amongthe values and the finiteness of the human reason, the legislators can but make "comparative good" laws while the godfathers make the best ones. So none but the talents take on the work of legislation because it is the most difficult and subtle art.
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