1. What is the meaning of law?
2. How did the idea of natural law develop
PROBLEM
Those who give a large place to intellect in the
determination of morality usually hold that right
reason expresses itself in the form of law. Since
there is a question of intellect direct moral
action, the judgement of right reason assumes
the form of a command prescribing as moral or
forbidding as immoral certain kind of conduct,
and this is what commonly understood as a law.
A law is closely related to a norm or standard, the
main difference being that a norm appeals to the
intellect, enabling to distinguish one thing from
another, whereas a law imposes an obligation on
the will to conform to the standard. Since norm
and law are not contradictory but
supplementary, it is not necessary to keep a
sharp distinction between them. Law is a highly
controversial topic in morals today. Some will
not hear of the world. It is bad enough, they say,
to have to endure laws governing our moral life.
Surely the good life should appeal to us without
any form of coercion, and how is it possible to
coerce a moral life, whose dwelling place is in the
interior of each person’s soul? We faced with a
difficult problem. Shall we throw away a good
word because it has come to be perversely
misunderstood, or engage in the task of
educating people in the proper understanding of
what law really is? If the word law had
irretrievably pick up such disastrous
connotations as to be beyond rehabilitation, we
should drop it and use other expressions, but the
case does not seem that desperate, and we
would lose too much. The word law is so fixed in
the tradition of ethical writing that students
would have to learn its meaning anyway if they
want to do any serious reading in the great
ethical writers. They will have to keep an open
mind and not look exclusively at the coercive
aspect of law.
The following questions can be guide our
discussion:
1
in his history?
3. What are the arguments for and against
a natural law?
4. How do we come to know the natural
law?
5. What is the content of natural law?
6. Is natural law invariable?
7. Is there an eternal law beyond the
natural law?
MEANING OF LAW
When we say the word law, what comes to mind
first of all is human law, the law of the state. This
is what St. Thomas seems to have in mind when
he gives us his classical definition of law, though
the definition is also applicable to law in a wider
sense:
Law is nothing else than an ordinance of reason
for the common good, promulgated by him who
has care of the community.
1. It is called an ordinance because it is no
mere advice, counsel, or suggestion but
an order, a command, a mandate
imposing the legislator’s will on the
citizens and binding with moral
necessity.
2. A law is said to be of reason because it
must be no arbitrary whim but
intelligent direction, imposed by the
superior’s will but planned and
formulated by right reason. To be
reasonable a law must be consistent
with other laws and rights, just in
distributing benefits and burdens,
observable as not being too harsh or
difficult, enforceable so that proper
observation is actually secured, and
useful in that the good it aims at is worth
the price.
3. A law is for the common good, for the
welfare of the community as a whole,
and not for the benefit of individuals as
 such. A command authoritatively given
to an individual about a private matter
can require that person’s obedience but
is not a law.
4. A law must be promulgated, or made
known to those whom it binds. It must
be published in such a manner that it can
be known readily, though each subject
need not be given personal notice.
5. A law must come from one has care of
the community, from a legislator having
authority or jurisdiction, who may be a
single individual or a body passing laws
by joint action. Not anyone who pleases
may pass a law. What sets the lawgiver
off from the rest with the right to
command is the lawgiver’s authority.
So a law must be mandatory, reasonable,
community-serving, promulgated, and
authoritative. Without these characteristics it is
not a genuine law and has no binding force. Law
in this primary and strict sense directs free
beings by imposing on their freedom the
restraint of obligation, duty, or oughtness, the
type of necessity we have called moral necessity,
which does not consist of physical compulsion,
though the threat of it may be used as
enforcement. Such laws can be disobeyed and
often are, but they ought not to be, and it is in
this ought not that moral necessity consists.
Governance by law is the only way of regulating
human acts that is consistent with the dignity of
a person.
In an extended and analogous sense the term
law is applied to nonfree beings to express an
observed uniformity or regularity in their
behaviour. The laws of physics, chemistry,
biology, and allied sciences may be considered as
mere formulas, and then they are laws in only a
metaphorical sense. If it is thought that this
observed uniformity does not happen
accidentally but that there is something in the
very nature of the bodies and the structure of
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the universe that sets their pattern of activity for
them, then this physical necessity constitutes
physical law.
Metaphorical uses of the term law go beyond
scientific formulas to express observed
uniformities less closely connected with the
nature of things, such as the law of diminishing
returns in economics or Grimm’s law in
philology, or to express entrenched social
customs such as the laws of etiquette and
diplomatic protocol.
It was necessary to describe to describe these
various meanings of the term law to bring out its
analogous character. The meanings are related
but not wholly the same. Nothing but untold
confusion will result if we try to talk about the
moral law or the natural law by applying to it the
modes of legislation and promulgation proper to
the civil law, or on the other hand if we think of
it the merely figurative sense of observed
regularities of behaviour. It will be law in the
strict sense and not in a figurative one, but with
marked differences from the law of the state and
physical law. To make much sense of controversy
on natural law we should first see something of
its history.
HISTORY OF NATURAL LAW
The term natural law has had its ups and downs
and has not been understood in the same sense
in every age. It is important to see some of these
swings in meaning, for an argument or a criticism
that is valid in one period will not apply to the
term as understood in a different historical
context.
The early Greeks contrasted physis (nature) and
nomos (law), the latter being understood in the
sense of human convention and contrivance, so
that a union of the two words in a phrase such as
natural law seemed contradictory. Yet they had
a feeling for what is right and just beyond human
laws. Plato is unintelligible without the ideas of
law and justice in which all human law and
justice in which all human law and justice
participate. Aristotle is more explicit:
Particular law is that which each community lays
down and applies to its own members: this is
partly written and partly unwritten. Universal
law is the law of nature. For there really is, as
everyone to some extent divines, a natural
justice and injustice that is binding on all men,
even on those who have no association or
covenant with each other. It is this that
Sophocles’ Antigone clearly means when she
says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act
in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was
just by nature.
Not of today or yesterday it is,
But lives, of eternal: none can date its birth.
The Stoics were the first to make use of the term
natural law. For them it is the absolutely
necessary course that nature fatalistically
follows, with no distinction made between
physical and moral law. Reason urges us to obey
it willingly rather than have it forced on us, since
thus we intelligently comply with the inevitable
law of our being. Cicero’s remarkable passages
are probably to be understood in a Stoic sense:
There is a law, judges, not written but inborn, not
learned or passed on by tradition but sucked
from nature’s breast. . .
There is truly a law, which is right reason, fitted
to our nature, proclaimed to all men, constant
everlasting. It calls to duty by commanding and
deters from wrong by forbidding, neither
commanding nor forbidding the good man in
vain even when it fails to move the wicked. It can
neither be evaded nor amended nor wholly
abolished. No decree of Senate or people can
free us from it. No explainer or interpreter of it
need be sought but it sought but itself. There will
not be found one law at Rome and another at
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Athens, one now and another later, but one law
everlasting and unchangeable, extending to all
nations and all times which one common teacher
and ruler of all, God, this law’s founder,
promulgator, and enforcer. The man who does
not obey him flees from himself and even if he
escapes other punishments normally incurred,
pays the supreme penalty by the very fact that
he despises the nature of man in himself.
On the whole, the natural law as conceived by
the Greeks is a rising beyond the particular and
contingent to a universal and necessary ideal of
truly human, giving a rule of life that we
transgress at the peril of unhappiness in the
frustration of our powers and stultification of
our being. It is not a law imposed and enforced
authoritatively by a human legislator. With the
Romans came the distinction between jus, or
right, and lex, or law, between what is just (jus)
and the command to do it (lex). For the natural
law the only legislator could be God, as Cicero
says, but he is not yet clearly portrayed as
personal God.
The Judeo-Christian tradition introduced a new
turn into this speculation by regarding nature as
the product of God’s creative act. God acting as
a lawgiver sets the law for his creation by his
wisdom and enforces it by his will. His
providence constitutes him governor of the
universe, which he directs to its appointed end.
Here we have the concept of the eternal law
developed by St. Augustine, which is the old
natural law of the Greeks but seen from the side
of God the creator and lawgiver. The codification
of Roman law brought the civil law into contact
with the natural law; the law of nations (jus
gentium) lies in the area where the two meet
and partly overlap. By the thirteenth century,
studies in Roman and Canon Law, in ethics and
politics, had laid the ground for an adequate
philosophy of law which first appeared in St.
Thomas’s Summa Theologica as the Treatise on
Law, with his fourfold distinction of eternal law,
natural law, human law, and divine (revealed)
law. But some unsolved difficulties remained.
The medieval Church asserted her position as
guardian of faith and morals. Are natural morals
included too? Can there be an authoritative
interpreter of natural law? If so, how does the
law remain natural? These questions clouded an
understanding of the natural law for some
centuries and are not yet wholly dispelled.
Early Protestantism continued the medieval
tradition, looking on nature as God’s creation
and on God as supreme lawgiver. But further
difficulties arise. Any claims of the church to be
interpreter of the natural law are rejected in
favour of private individual conscience. But how
shall it decided? The theory of total depravity,
emphasized by Luther and still more by Calvin,
seems incompatible with a natural law. Human
nature, if total depraved, offers no sure
guidance for our moral life. Nothing is left but
the political state. An established religion,
national rather than international, modelled on
the union of nation and religion in the Old
Testament, seemed to them the best refuge. A
theocracy like that of Geneva or Massachusetts,
minutely regulating people’s private lives was
the logical outcome. In such a view the moral
law is stressed, but its natural character seems
to have disappeared. It should be expected that
Enlightenment of the Age of Reason would
carry us back to pre-Christian concepts. Natural
law returns but in a new guise. God as lawgiver
drops out. If he is acknowledge at all, he is
conceived in deist fashion, unconcerned with
the world and not governing it by his
providence. Again we have natural law without
an eternal law, without a lawgiver, without any
really binding obligation. Again it is jus rather
than lex, natural right or justice rather than a
natural law in the strict sense. But the natural
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aspect of it, far from being abandoned, is
reinforced and reinterpreted. In that
rationalistic age human nature is regarded as
eminently knowable by human reason. The
method that reason pursued, however, is not a
search for what is essential to human nature
but for what is primitive in it, or if it seeks the
essential, it endeavors to find it in primitive. The
distinction between the essential and the
accidental is confused with the distinction
between the natural and the artificial. The way
to find human nature, it was thought, is by
stripping from human nature the artificial
accretions of civilization so that it may be seen
in its native state, in the so-called state of
nature. The natural is understood to be the
native, original, or primeval, and “natural man”
is the human being before or without the social
contract that established human society
essence as the unspoiled savage. Thus the Age
of Enlightenment passes into the Age of
Romanticism.
In the nineteenth century, trust in rationalist
procedures waned Kant’s separation of
morality and legality and made them a function
of the civil law. He leaves no place for natural
rights. He affirmed the moral law but had it
known intuitively and not by reasoning from
human nature; thus understood, it is a moral
law, but is it a natural law? The rise of the
historical school of jurisprudence and the
influence of evolutionary theories in Hegel and
Darwin brought in the view of human nature as
something constant developing and
progressing. Laws and morals, rights, and
duties, change as human nature changes; they
are products of human custom, relics of
traditional folkways, variable for each focus of
culture and for each stage of social evolution.
Legal positivism and legal pragmatism appear
on the scene and relegate natural law and
natural rights to the museum of discarded
superstitions. The names may be kept because
of the aura of veneration surrounding them, but
all their substance is interpreted away. The
legal profession especially is suspicious of any
appeal to a higher good reason, if we remember
the interpretations read into the “due process”
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
canonizing the status quo as the only natural
one and protecting vested interests. On the
other hand, what guarantee have we of our
rights with a judge who goes beyond the
written law to decide a case by some private
intuition he or she may have of a higher law?
The twentieth century, despite the persistence
of legal positivism and pragmatism, is
witnessing a tentative revival of natural law.
There may have been abuses of the higher law
theory, but what else do we have? The old
question returns. Without natural law, what
guide have our lawmakers but utility and
expediency, trial and error? How can they
determine what ideally ought to be the laws of
states and of human conduct? The dilemma is a
serious one. Either there is no law beyond the
civil law, and hence no natural rights, no court
of appeal, no recourse from tyranny, and I am
subject to the arbitrary will of anyone who can
control me by force; or there is beyond the civil
law a higher law, but then I am my own judge
and, though It is evident to me that this higher
law objectively embodies natural right and
justice, my associates have no assurance that
my judgement is correct. The first horn of the
dilemma causes the appeal to a higher law, to
which the founders of our country turned
against the arbitrary decrees of Parliament. The
second horn causes the qualm of the legal
positivists, who see citizens setting aside a civil
law because it disagrees with their personal
interpretation of a higher law. We are back
again to Antigone’s problem. It is not solved by
putting the matter to vote and accepting
majority rule, for that would that mean no
rights for minorities. The tyranny of the
monarch would be exchanged for the tyranny
of the mob.
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The problem is insoluble for any society so
based on scepticism and relativism as to
maintain that human nature is unknowable,
that rights and duties cannot be determined,
that justice is an empty abstraction, that in
morals there is nothing but opinion and
anybody’s opinion is as good as commonly
breathed atmosphere of thought and principle
must rest on some public philosophy. That the
natural law seems to be the only possible one is
the reason for its revival in our time.
THE NATURAL LAW THEORY
That there is a natural law, at least in the sense
in which the Greeks took it, without explicit
reference to a divine lawgiver, is implied in
much that has been said so far: the existence of
values and their objective basis; the pre-
eminence and self-justification of moral value;
its irreducibility to any other value, and its
absolutely imperative but non-compulsory
necessity; the inner drive of each being toward
the attainment of its end, which is the fulfilment
of its function in the universe; the ability of
humans to use reason to reflect on their nature
to distinguish moral good from moral evil in
living their lives. What remains is to point out
that all this material put together adds up to a
law, and, since it is rooted in human nature as
rational and free, to a natural law.
That there are physical laws governing the
activity of beings in the universe is claimed as
evident from the very existence of scientific
knowledge. An utterly haphazard world could
not be studied. Formulas expressing the
observed regularities of natural phenomena are
in many cases also rules of action carried out
with remarkable constancy. Living beings,
especially, direct their activity toward their self-
preservation, growth, and reproduction,
following the definite pattern of living
prescribed for them by the kind of beings they
are, by their structure and function which is
what is meant by their nature. Departure from
nature pattern does not happen spontaneously.
A mild deviation imposed from the outside
usually results in maladjustment and debility an
extreme one in death. To fulfil their function
they must live according to their natures, and
this is the physical law of their life.
The same physical law of nature that applies to
inanimate, vegetable, and animal nature
applies likewise to human nature. As it applies
to each of the other three levels with a
difference, so also it applies to human nature
with a difference. Human beings are unique in
being rational and free. Though the subject to
physical law like other chemically composed
body having mass and energy, to the biological
drives and urges that control the world of living
organisms, to the sensitive reactions and
appetites characteristics of brain and nerve
equipped animals, yet beyond6 all these we can
intellectually know what is good for us and can
wilfully choose to follow it. We are subject to a
moral law, the natural law. By examining the
kind of conduct suitable to me and can see how
this conduct alone can lead me to what is good
for me. I see that modes of conduct that area
inhuman or antisocial, abusive of myself or of
my fellows, while conferring a temporary
advantage, must be destructive of me and of my
race in the long run. I also see that I cannot
renounce my rational and free nature and the
responsibility bound up with it. Come what
may, I must maintain my human dignity or
become intolerable to myself. I must demand
that refuse to and I must deserve my own and
their respect by behaving as a person.
Natural law, it is said, tests itself in the
laboratory of history. Superficial observation
may seem to show such differences of detail in
various cultures as to eliminate any universal
pattern of human living, but more careful
scrutiny detects a highest common factor in all
moral codes. Even the most degraded savages
are recognizable as human beings, not merely
6
by the shape of their bodies but chiefly by the
way they live and act. Too great a departure
from the normal mode of human behaviour
leads only to frustration and extinction.
Individuals here and there, as well as tribes and
nations here and there, may flourish though
they have adopted a form of life contrary to the
natural law, but they are the exceptions that
prove the rule. History itself catches up with
them and eventually punishes the folly of such
living because is meant by the natural law.
To sum up the argument: The only means both
effective and suitable to direct human beings to
their proper good, to the fulfilment of their
function in the universe, and to the attainment
of their end is the natural moral law.
1. It must be a law. A mere wish, counsel,
hint, or suggestion would not be
effective, for it would lack binding force
and could be disregarded without fault
or penalty. It would be an insufficient
motive in the face of difficulties. It
would work when it is not needed,
when the path is clear and the going
pleasant; but it would not work when it
is needed, when we must be goaded
forward over the dark and rough spots
of life. Nothing less than a law will do.
2. It must be a moral law. Physical laws are
suitable only to nonrational beings. An
internal determination or necessity of
our nature such as a found in
nonrational beings would destroy
human freedom and make us a living
contradiction beings made free but not
able to exercise able to exercise their
freedom. External compulsion would
mean that we must accomplish our end
despite our freedom and thus would do
violence to both our freedom and our
rationality.
3. It must be a natural law. Every creature
tends to its end by its activity. Humans
 are no exception; we too have a nature,
and in us it fulfils the same function.
Humankind cannot be the only being in
nature designed by its nature.
Therefore human beings also can find
that their nature is the means that will
guide them to their end, and this is
what is understood as the natural law.
CASE FOR AND AGAINST NATURAL LAW
Many moralists, chiefly those of the last century
and the present, oppose the basis of morals on
nature or on law, and especially on the
combination of the two. We take up the
objections first and then the replies.
1. Natural law stems from the Aristotelian
concept of a fixed essence or nature
have been invalidated by the
experimental method of modern
science, which fails to discover any such
hard and fast categories among things,
and the theory of evolution, which
shows that there are no invariable
classes of living things. Process
philosophies see everything on the
move, becoming something quite new,
with no static patterns of behavior to be
forever repeated. If there is no fixed
human nature, there can be no
obligation arising from it.
2. There is not as much uniformity in
human behaviour as natural law theorist
assume. It is not the person who
conforms who is the best examples of
the human race, but the who has the
courage to break out of the narrow circle
of conformity and to initiate new ways.
As the thinker and creator, he or she
pushes beyond the dictates of nature
and expresses the uniqueness of his or
her personality. Natural law with its
static ideals is actually contrary to our
rationality and freedom and a drawback
to self-development.
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3. What regularity we observe in human
behaviour does not come from any law
in human nature. The general
tendencies are simply there, urging us to
certain kinds of behaviour, chiefly of the
physical kind, but imposing no obligation
to act in a definite way. To see a law in
this behaviour is the fallacy of mistaking
the figurative for the literal. The state
governs us by la; to see us as also
governed by our nature is mere
figurative expression personifying
human nature as a lawgiver and
represents no real government or real
law.
4. A natural law should be easily known by
those in whose nature such a law is
supposed to reside. People disagree not
only on how to fulfil their obligations but
also on what their obligations are and
whether they have any. Even those who
admit a natural law do not agree on its
content, interpretation, or application.
Hence, even if a natural law existed, it
would be practically useless as a guide to
a moral living.
5. The natural law is a useless figure of
speech unless it is imposed by some
superior who has the power of
enforcement. The most logical thinkers,
therefore, are those who deduce a
natural law from an eternal law in God.
But not all people accept a theistic
philosophy. Those who admit a direct
governance over them by God manifests
to them the divine decrees. If there are
no such decrees, no manifestation of
God’s will need be written in our nature.
6. Christian revelation sees human nature
infected with the evil of sin, especially
that sin inherited from the original fall of
humankind, however interpreted. Some
consider that human nature is so
essentially depraved in its fallen state
 that it can be no trustworthy guide to
human living; in fact, the important
thing is to rise above human nature by
the help of grace, and unless one does
so, one has not even begun the ethical
life. Thus natural law, which is of no
value to nontheists, is also of little value
to a large group of theists.
7. Natural law has been used to justify any
kind of act one wants to impose on all
people. All one has to do is to refer glibly
to what to what one declares to be a
natural law percept. Likewise, it has
been used to excuse any kind of conduct.
One merely says that the act, though
perhaps not very laudatory, is not
forbidden by any natural law precept.
Thus natural law is a device for having
and proving any kind of conduct one
wants. Those abuse does not destroy the
use of a thing, anything that is set down
as the absolute standard of morality
should not be capable of such ready and
frequent abuse.
8. Natural law is the source of the legalism,
casuistry, pharisaism, and bourgeois
smugness that have characterized so
much ethical thought. The human
person is made to serve some abstract
formulation, as the person is for law
rather than the law for the person.
Instead of burdening ourselves with
more and more rules, adding to behind
the obvious laws, we ought to declare
our independence, exert our freedom,
and express the uniqueness of our
personalities.
9. Law and love are so opposed that it is
difficult to reconcile them. It is true that
they may both coincide in such a way
that the law commands what love
prompts. But the motives are so
different that it is psychologically
disrupting to try to act from both
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motives at once. Love is so far superior
to law should be wholly overcome in
following the inspiration of love. These
similar arguments are of sufficient weigh
to require serious consideration, so
much so that several succeeding
chapters will be needed to explore
them. Only a word on each is possible
now. Natural law theorist claim that they
are based on misunderstanding of what
natural law purports to mean. They
answer:
1. Aristotelianism and stoicism both
logically lead to some kind of natural
law, but the converse does not follow.
One can accept natural law with-out
interpreting nature either in an
Aristotelian or in a stoic sense. Modern
science ma have blurred the edges of
hard and fast categories, but we can still
tell humans from other kinds of beings.
it is true that evolution of species held
no place in historical aristotelianism, but
the two need not be totally irreconcible.
In Aristotle, nature itself is a principle of
development, of process, of passage
from potentiality to actuality; its
extension from the individual to the
species, from the on no genetic to the
phylogenetic, might be judged
illegitimate modification of
Aristotelianism to suit modern
discoveries. However, there is no
necessity of holding to a strictly
Aristotelian interpretation of nature to
have natural law.
2. There is no need to consider the
nature of a being as absolutely static.
Especially, a rational and free being
could not be static and also faithful to its
own rationality and freedom. It is
because we are by rational and free that
we are thinkers and creators. In
developing the arts and science, in
 establishing and furthering civilization,
we are acting most in accord with our
nature. In particular, it is by our rational
and free nature that we develop our
morals and advance to clearer
formulation of the ideals of conduct to
which we ought to aspire. Besides,
humans are by nature personal beings
and they act most naturally when they
provide for the fullest expression of their
personalities.
3. The extension of the term law beyond
the civil law to analogous modes of
directing human life is a perfectly
legitimate usage quite consonant with
our normal mode of thought and
speech. Deception should occur only if
we fail to separate out the connected
meanings or confuse one for the other.
The natural law lacks, but there are
fundamental resemblances as important
as the differences and justifying the use
of a common if analogous concept.
4. If the natural law were known
intuitively by a simple inspection of
human nature and no carebel study of
this nature were required, then there
should be no dispute about natural law.
But it is not according to our nature to
know difficult and complex matter in
such a simple way. We are made to
think, to reason, to argue matters out for
ourselves, and it is in this way that we
arrive at the content, interpretation, and
application of natural law.
5. It is no accident that the natural law
will appeal more to theist and that they
will recognize its counterpart in the
eternal law. But our historical sketch
showed that the Greeks recognized
natural law centuries before St.
Augustine developed the concept of
eternal law. Eternal law would not have
much meaning without its promulgation
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in the natural law, but natural law can be
recognized even by those who in their
philosophy made no direct reference to
God. The argument given previously
made no appeal to the eternal law,
though t certainly did not deny it.
6. Ethics as a philosophical discipline
must be developed independently of
such theological concepts as original sin.
The weaknesses of human nature are
plain to all, and there is no conflict
between a philosophical evidence for a
theory of total depravity, and in the
opinion of most, no theological evidence
for it either. The natural law can still be
a good guide even if not an infallible one,
especially when there is no other.
7. One purpose of a study of natural law
is to purge it of errors and abuses that
have been worst enemies. One common
abuse is to give it an absoluteness it
cannot have. This is not to deny that the
natural law has an absolute foundation,
but to recognize that a natural law must
be as relative as human nature. The
readiness and frequency of the abuse is
hardly a valid argument; civil laws are
readily and frequently abused, yet we
cannot on that account deny that there
are any or that we need them.
8. Legalism, casuistry, hypocrisy, and
externalism can be called occupational
hazards of law, of any kind of law. People
tend to follow the letter rather than the
spirit, especially when the letters
favours them. Since the natural law is
wholly unformulated, it has no letter and
is all spirit. For this reason natural law is
the best corrective for an over literal
interpretation of positive law and has
been so since Antigone was portrayed as
appealing to a higher law against cruelty
of her uncle the king. Since anyone
possessing human nature is a person, he
 or she cannot live according to that
nature without expressing the
uniqueness of his or her personality; this
is perhaps the main thing the natural law
demands.
9. An opposition between law and love
is artificially contrived and vanishes with
a proper understanding of both. The
human person is by nature a loving
being. To suppress all love in oneself
would be to make of that self a kind of
monster that the natural law could not
approve. However, it would be
unrealistic to say that one’s love is in no
need of illumination and guidance by
reflective reason. When a man, for
example, feels the urgent thrust of
passionate desire toward a woman he is
not allowed to have, he has to keep his
eye both on the quality of his love and
on the law, whether he finds it
psychologically disrupting or not. No one
can avoid all moral crisis in this life. Love
is indeed the higher motive, but law is
often a needed safeguard.
The summary character of both these
questions and answers readily granted,
but there is an advantage in placing
them in immediate confrontation.
Several of them will become clearer
from our next discussion.
KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL LAW
We tend to think of a law as a written
decree or spoken command, but nothing
of this sort is found in natural law.
Failure to understand that the natural
law of itself is not formulated has led
believers in innate ideas and other
intuitionists to imagine that we have
moral concepts and judgments ready
made in our minds at birth or that we
easily form them by the use of some
infallible special faculty. Crisis of such
10
views have hastily jumped to the
conclusion that, if the natural law can be
known only in this ways and since there
is no such knowledge, there can be no
such thing as a natural law. The fallacy is
in the first premise; the natural law is not
known in this way.
How, then, is it known? Natural law is an
unwritten law. Our knowledge of it has
grown and developed little by little along
with the growth and development of our
moral awareness. To understand this
process of growth in moral
consciousness, we have to appreciate
the work of the anthropologists who
show us the primitive within which this
tribal life and the aura of form. Some
philosophers (and theologians) have
failed to appreciate the history of our
moral development, which has passed
through many diverse stages and forms.
Humans did not always know what we
know today about moral values and
moral principles. Our knowledge of the
natural law began to develop nor can we
appreciate its roots in our own
awareness of it.
Our awareness of the natural law begins
with connatural knowledge. Without
study of reflection, humans in a
prescientific and prephilosophical
condition simply follow their inclinations
and emotions in using their powers for
the purposes they obviously can serve.
Such persons are following the natural
law when, for example, they see that
taking a human life is not the same as
taking an animal’s life. Human reason
has not discovered this regulation of the
natural law in an abstract and
theoretical manner. Nor was it
discovered through the conceptualizing
power of the intellect alone. Human
reason discovers the regulations of the
 natural law through the guidance of
inclinations and emotions of human
nature. This is knowledge through
inclination, not knowledge through
concepts and conceptual judgements. It
is at first an obscure, unsystematic, lived
awareness by connaturality congeniality
in which human consciousness consults
and listens to the stirrings and vibrations
of one’s own abiding tendencies and
emotions. Human beings have consulted
and listened to these inclinations and
emotions throughout history, and the
human and emotions throughout
history, and the human knowledge of
the natural law has been progressively
shaped and molded by those inclinations
and emotions, starting from the most
basic ones. These inclinations and
emotions are rooted in our very being,
which is vitality permeated with the
preconceptual life of our reason. Those
genuine inclinations and emotions were
either developed or released as human
development progressed. They are
shown by the very history of our
developing moral awareness. Starting
from the most ancient and primitive
social communities, those inclinations
and emotions were genuine that guided
human reason in becoming gradually
aware of the regulations that have most
definitely and generally been recognized
by the human race. Our awareness of
the primordial aspects of natural law
was at first expressed in social patterns
rather than in personal judgements.
Throughout history our knowledge of
natural law has developed within the
double protective housing of individual
human inclinations and emotions and
human society.
Knowledge through inclination and
emotion shows us the fundamental
11
dynamic schemes of natural law. Some
examples of this kind of knowledge
might help us to see the difference
between it and moral regulations
conceptually discovered and rationally
deduced. For instance, to take a human
life is not the same as taking an animal’s
life; the family as a group has to comply
with some fixed pattern or order; sexual
intercourse has to be contained within
given limits; human beings are bound to
live together under certain rules and
regulations. Understood in their still
undetermined meaning, these general
tendentious forms or dynamic schemes
or moral regulations are found
everywhere and every time. Neither the
individual in his or her growth to
maturity nor the human race in its
development toward civilization can
remain always in this primitive
condition. Nevertheless, we must
appreciate fully this kind of knowledge
because our moral lives have their roots
right here in knowledge through
inclination and emotion, connatural
knowledge.
Knowledge of the natural law grows
slowly. Ours is a rational and free nature,
and we find the natural law by the use of
reason in drawing conclusions about our
own nature. We have no moral
judgements formed at birth and ready
for use but must form them for
ourselves. We are equipped by our
judgements and have a natural tendency
to use this ability, and our own nature is
the object from which we draw our
moral ideas and concerning which we
frame our moral judgements.
People have a natural interest in facility
for forming rules of conduct. I can reflect
on myself and, finding myself
interesting, am stimulated to self-
 observation. I can evaluate and criticize
my own actions and the actions of other
like me. I can understand the needs of
my own nature and suitable of my deeds
to these needs. I can compare my
conduct with my nature and understand
the conformity or nonconformity
between them. I can therefore draw up
rules conduct that will preserve and
enhance this conformity. If a person
becomes a legislator in human society,
he or she formulates such rules and
promulgates them to the citizens by
some external sign; the law now
becomes positive law. Such rules, before
formulation and external promulgation,
were already natural law.
All law is promulgated through reason
because it is reason alone that can
understand a law. This statement is true
both of the natural law and of positive
law. But positive law is manifested to
reason by the help of some external
decree or announcement intimating the
intention of the lawgiver. The natural
law is manifested to reason not by any
external sign but by a rationally
conducted examination of human
nature taken together with all its parts
and relations.
The natural la exists in virtual condition
in every rational and free being even
before that person’s reason is
sufficiently developed to form actual
moral judgements. An infant possesses
the natural law in the same way as it has
intelligence, that is, as an undeveloped
power. As the person advances in the
use of reason and forms moral
principles, either with the help of moral
training or by his or her own efforts, the
natural moral law passes from the
virtual to the formal state. A similar
advance occurs in the passage of the
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race from a primitive to a cultures
society. To aid people in this process of
moral growth is the aim of ethics as a
practical science.
CONTENT OF NATURAL LAW
How do we come to know the content of
the natural law—what it actually
prescribes? Though people by the use of
reason are able to develop and explicit
code of moral conduct, how many
actually succeed in doing so? Anyone
invincibly ignorant of the prescriptions
of the natural law is excused from
keeping them, but if most of those
possessing human nature were in this
condition, how could it be called natural
law? On the one hand, the natural law
must be sufficiently known to the
generality of humankind. On the other
hand, there is much controversy and
disagreement of opinion on matters of
morality, betokening a widespread
ignorance. Many of these disagreements
can be discounted as dealing not with
principles of morality but with their
application; the law itself is clear, and
the argument is only about cases of and
concern the very principles of morality.
If these principles can be unknown, how
is the natural law sufficiently
promulgated?
The way out of this dilemma is to
recognize that the natural law consists of
precepts of varying degrees of
importance for the welfare of humanity,
that the more fundamental principles of
the natural law cannot be invincibly
unknown by normal mature persons,
whereas reasoned conclusions derived
from them can be St. Thomas says:
There belong to the natural law, first,
certain most common precepts that are
 known to all; and secondly, certain
secondary and more particular precepts,
which are, as it were, conclusions
following closely from the first
principles. As to the common principles,
the natural law, in its universal meaning,
cannot in any way be blotted out from
men’s hearts. But it is blotted out in the
case of a particular action, in so far as
reason is hindered from applying the
common principle to the particular
action because of conscience or some
other passion…. But also the other, the
secondary precepts, the natural law can
be blotted out from the human heart,
either by occur in respect of necessary
conclusions; or by vicious customs and
corrupt habits, as, among some men,
theft, even unnatural vices. . . were not
esteemed sinful.
Levels in the Knowledge of Natural Law
A more precise discrimination of these
principles is needed. The more general
the principles, the more impossible it is
for them to be unknown, whereas the
more particular and determinate they
become, the more possibility there is for
ignorance and deception. We may
distinguish:
1. The first moral principle
2. Commonly known general principles
3. Reasoned conclusions
4. Particular applications
1. There is one principle of the natural
law, which in the practical field
corresponds to the principle of
contradiction in the speculative field.
We have already discussed this first
moral principle, “Do good and avoid
evil,” and now expressly refer it to
natural law. It cannot be invincibly
13
unknown to anyone who has the use of
reason at all.
2. There are other common or general
principles based on the first principle,
following from it by inference so simple
and easy that no normal mature person
can fail to make it. These moral axioms
express the natural inclinations we have
in common with all substances, such as
“Preserve your own being,” orin
common with other animate beings,
such as “Care for your offspring” or the
inclinations clearly springing from our
rationality and freedom, such as “Avoid
offending those among whom you must
live.” One could hardly know the first
principle, “Do good and avoid evil,” and
fail to see what is good and what is evil
in such obvious cases. These common
principles cannot be invincibly unknown
to persons whose reason is develop, that
is, to persons of normal intelligence who
have arrived at mental maturity and who
have received an adequate moral
education. It is to be expected that the
feebleminded through incapacity and
children through immaturity will be
deficient in this knowledge. An adequate
moral education is a very important
factor. It need not run parallel with
mental education. One may have no
book learning at all and yet have
received an excellent moral training; on
the other hand, highly educated people
of brilliant talents may be victims of
defective or perverted moral training.
The latter cannot be considered morally
normal, for their moral reason is
undeveloped. One brought up in an
atmosphere of cynical misanthrophy,
one trained from youth in crime and
degeneracy, one encouraged to
rebellion against all authority, has had
the moral side of his or her nature
 artificially blinded and starved. This
cannot be called the normal human
condition.
3. There are remote conclusions derived
by a complicated process of reasoning.
There is nothing doubtful about these
conclusions; the conclusion is certain
and the logic perfect, but the reasoning
is long and involved, as in difficult
theorem in geometry. Untrained minds
cannot follow it, and trained minds can
become side-tracked though confusion
or prejudice. Such moral questions as
suicide, mercy killing, duelling, divorce,
polygamy, slavery, and racism are
examples in point. These remote
conclusions can be invincibly unknown
even by intelligent people living in a
cultivated moral atmosphere.
4. There are applications of principles of
the natural law to particular cases.
Normal, mature people may err in their
application of any principles to a
concrete case. The resulting
misjudgement does not mean that they
do not know the principles themselves
or that they are ignorant of the natural
law, but only they are inexpert in
applying principles to practice, like one
who knows mathematics but gets
bogged down in working problems.
The terms normal and mature, used in
the foregoing discussion, may seem too
inexact, but greater preciseness inthis
matter is not possible because of the
gradual way in which human reason
develops. It depends on ability, age,
opportunity, effort, habbit and
environment, all of which shape the
moral character of the person. There will
be many borderline cases, but ethical
theory must start with what is clear and
normal before proceeding to the
indistinct and abnormal.
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APPARENT EXCEPTIONS
Many difficulties can be brought up the
customs of primitive tribes and even
from some civilized practices. To cover
these in detail would be too long an
excursion into anthropology and
sociology, but a few norms can be laid
down for handling them. About any
alleged practice one should ask:
1. Are the facts certain?
2. Are the moral implications properly
interpreted?
3. Is this a general principle or remote
conclusion?
4. Are these people normal and mature?
6. is their ignorance really invincible?
NATURAL LAW, ABSOLUTE OR
RELATIVE
Some view natural law as a rigid and
stifling box put around their lives and
cramping them into an unrelieved round
of prescribed duties. Others may find
natural law to be so vague and fluid as to
be practically useless. In answer to such
exaggerations it is said that natural law
is as absolute and relative as human
nature. Even in his day St. Thomas saw
this:
To the natural law belong those thing to
which a man is inclined naturally; and
among these it is proper to man to be
inclined to act according to reason.
Some modern legal writers speak of a
“natural law with a variable content”
looking toward a compromise that will
give them both the needed higher law
on which human law should be
modelled, and an adjustability of this law
to fit human progress.
 THE ETERNAL LAW

Can the human being rational and free,

who is at least the proximate basis or
must we look for something beyond?
Naturalists and humanists make the
human person supreme and, if they
admit one imposed on humans from
above them eternal law. The theist, who
views the universe with humans in it as
created by God, understand that there
can be no morals and no law
independently of God. Such as theist
therefore accepts the natural law as “the
rational creature’s participation of the
eternal law.”

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