Laws of humanity

“ Reason, too, in harmony with these laws, shows that the true dignity of Humanity is in the moral and intellectual nature, and that the labors of Justice and Benevolence, directed by intelligence and abasing that part which is in common with beasts, are the highest forms of human conduct. ”

“ Hitherto in this work laws have been referred to, and also spoken of as higher and lower, and this distinction was necessary; but now the Kingdom is reached, we see that all the forces operative in human life are the varied manifestations of the One Supreme Law of Love. It is by virtue of this Law that Humanity suffers, that, by the intensity of its sufferings, it shall become purified and wise, and so relinquish the source of suffering, which is selfishness. ”

“ There are many noble things in human life, but to most of them attach evils which are fated to corrupt and spoil them. Is not justice noble, which has been the civiliser of humanity? How then can the advocate of justice be other than noble? And yet upon this profession which is presented to us under the fair name of art has come an evil reputation. ”

“ And again, "Those rights which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called 'natural rights,' such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws, to be more effectually vested in every man, than they are. ”

“ It is glorious indeed for this society to have been the first in pointing out to those countries the idea of religion joined with that of humanity. By repairing the devastations of the Spaniards, she has begun to heal one of the most dangerous wounds that the human species ever received. ”

“ The moral law was a reason inherent in human nature, prescribing what men should do, and forbidding what they should not do: human laws were but appendages of it. [391] In this sense man was a “citizen of the world.” ”

“ We hear, indeed, some wild talk about the establishment of a social order, or disorder, without government and without laws and courts of justice, in which everybody can do what he or she pleases, and that when everybody can do what he or she pleases, everybody will do right, and have enough of the good things of the world, and be happy. ”

“ This three-fold law of the world—these three mighty principles in the historical progress of mankind—the hidden ways of a Providence delivering and emancipating the human race—next the free-will of man, doomed to a decisive choice in the struggle of life, and every action and sentiment springing from that freedom—lastly the power permitted by God to the evil principle, cannot be deduced as things absolutely necessary, like the phenomena of nature, or the laws of human reason. ”

“ In this day of ours, ablaze with learning, and culture,—veneered with a fine civilization, our laws are complex beyond all knowing and expression; man regulates his conduct—to them,—and is as virtuous, and honest as the law compels him to be. ”

“ As the individuals, all, the majority, or some controlling men, come to social self-consciousness, they express these natural laws, or their notion thereof, in certain rules of social conduct. They say, "This shall all men do, for it is right; that shall no man do, for it is wrong." The nation makes its social resolutions, social statutes, in its act of prayer; for legislation is to the State what prayer is to the man,—often an act of penitence, of sorrow, of fear, and yet of faith, hope, and love. ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty—that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span, would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage. ”

“ Of course it is possible to undertake to regard the moral law, or such objects as justice, in the same light in which we have just been viewing the facts that result from social law and from convention. ”

“ In the complicated relations of human life, various rules for the moral conduct of men have been devised, some of them in the form of statute laws, some in the form of customs, and, in virtue of these rules, certain artificial demands are made of men, which have no foundation in the moral nature of man; these demands are thought to represent duties. We have the same word to describe what I ought to do as subject to the law of God, and what is demanded of me by custom, or the statute. We call each a duty. ”

“ So with moral laws: they are not superadded to life by some divine or other authority. They are simply the fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we must obey to grow and be happy. ”

“ Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which contribute to the welfare of society, and by implication, of the individuals who compose it.
The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable—like the other so-called laws of Nature—by observation and experiment, and only in that way. ”

“ They arise along with the forces, and the same conditions which give rise to the forces, give rise to the laws. So moral laws accompany a certain degree of attainment and culture, only possible through relation. ”

“ But this fearless assertion of the rights of conscience necessarily involved the right to sit in judgment upon all human laws and the powers that ordained them, and to determine for themselves whether the law was lawful. ”

“ But society, national life, and all civilization are subject in their larger aspects to natural laws—which contradict morality——and outrage justice—and the statesman has to move with those laws and direct his people in accordance with them, despite the lesser by-laws of morality and justice. ”

“ Some further reflections concerning justice and injustice.
We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises. 'Tis on the strict observance of those three laws, that the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of establishing a good correspondence among men, where these are neglected. Society is absolutely necessary for the well-being of men; and these are as necessary to the support of society. ”

“ There is an external necessity for obeying social laws which must be respected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great an internal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our proper self-control and power for use ”

“ There has been, upon the whole, a moral government of the human race. The moral law, the distinction of right and wrong, has been established in every nation; and penalties have been established for wrong-doing. ”

“ Again, I find that there are rules of social life, which take the form of what are called "laws," and these are imposed by the will of some governing authority; they are always the product of some one human will, or of the collective will of a greater number of persons. ”

“ But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this time of world change, in this time when we are going to find out just how, in what particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while looking inside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of the law are made square with the moral judgments of mankind. ”

“ The social constitution is in fact framed together under the human capacity and necessity of perceiving and fulfilling the duties that arise in the inter-relations of associated life. For, the very laws and administrations on which the social order and welfare are dependent, and through which they are in a measure secured, are the embodiment of the ethical ideas and judgments of the people. ”

“ Men, in society, have found it essential, for mutual benefit, that the powers of Individuals, over the general causes of good, should be fixed by certain rules; that is, Laws. Acts done in conformity with those rules are called Just Acts ”

“ They consider that the present system rests on unchangeable laws of human nature, but that if men worked that system with consideration, unworldliness, and brotherly kindness, the present evil results would be avoided. ”

“ Social laws can be respected in the letter but not in the spirit, whereas spiritual laws must be accepted by the individual heart and practiced by the individual will in order to produce any useful result. ”

“ And we find that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly brings its reward and in559justice its punishment. But this we cannot see in individual life. If we look merely at individual life we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust.68 Shall we then say that the law which is manifest in social life is not true of individual life? ”

“ In my first work, Social Statics, published twenty-three years ago, the essential thesis is that, apart from their warrant as alleged Divine injunctions, and apart from their authority as moral intuitions, the principles of justice are primarily deducible from the laws of life as carried on under social conditions. ”

“ And it will be long before social discipline has so far modified human character that reverence for law, as rooted in the moral order of things, will serve in place of reverence for the power which enforces law. ”

“ The rule of law, Restrict your freedom through the conception of the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact! receives, it is true, a new sanction for conscience through the Moral Law; but the deduction of this sanction forms a part of the Science of Morality, and does not belong to the Science of Rights. ”

“ Extreme cases in which moral laws may be suspended.—The particular duties, virtues, and laws which society has established and recognized are the expressions of reason and experience declaring the conditions of human well-being. As such they deserve our profoundest respect; our unswerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules to cover every case. There are legitimate, though very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties. For instance it is a duty to respect the property of others. ”

“ This simple and potent statement of basic human rights is therefore equal in ethical and legal force to the bulk of the Decalogue itself and to the Golden Rule of Humanity, Honesty and Justice in its three best versions from the world’s greatest moral teachers, Confucius, Plato and Christ; so that in this simple sentence from the essential paragraph of our first great national document we have a code of Democratic Government and of Human Ethics in one sentence, which, as before suggested, should be taught in all our schools as the basis of Americanism. ”

“ With all these, the greatest possible latitude in regard to morals, and all the liberty we desire. Now, if society gives us all these, and you must admit that it does, has it not done its entire duty? ”

“ No sophistries of French philosophy on your part, no cruelty on your husband's, can abrogate the one law, which if you disown it as God's, is still man's—being necessary for the peace, honour, and safety of society. ”

“ It is in the constitution of these particular rules of life, suggested by reason and prudence, and put forth by competent authority, that human law, properly so called, consists, binding all citi- zens to work together for the attainment of the common end proposed to the community, and forbidding them to depart from this end; and in so far as human law is in conformity with the dictates of nature, leading to what is good, and deterring from evil. ”

“ All which, and many kindred facts, make it certain that the operativeness of a moral code depends much more upon the emotions called forth by its injunctions than on the consciousness of the utility of obeying such injunctions. The feelings excited during early life toward moral principles, by witnessing the social sanction and the religious sanction they possess, influence conduct far more than the perception that conformity to such principles conduces to welfare. ”

“ First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. ”

“ A system based on the principle that ethics and religion are made to serve human ambition naturally accords with the wishes of selfish individuals; and such theories as those embodied in the modem formula of liberty and equality annihilate the established relations of society, and outrage decorum and propriety. ”

“ And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world-state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. ”

“ I know what science this has come to be.
All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race,—
From generation unto generation fitted,
And shifted round from place to place.
Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry:
Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee!
The right born with us, ours in verity,
This to consider, there's, alas! ”

“ When men have found by experience, that 'tis impossible to subsist without society, and that 'tis impossible to maintain society, while they give free course to their appetites; so urgent an interest quickly restrains their actions, and imposes an obligation to observe those rules, which we call the laws of justice. ”