Natural law

“ One of the most striking generalizations of recent science is that even Laws have their Law. Phenomena first, in the progress of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature shortly presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines of beauty being the great Natural Laws. ”

“ A true natural law is an universal rule, and, as such, admits of no exceptions.
Again, human laws have no meaning apart from the existence of human society. Natural laws express the general course of nature, of which human society forms only an insignificant fraction. ”

“ When we speak of natural law we do not confine ourselves to what is commonly known as chemistry and physics, and the laws that govern the material world, but include as well the laws of our own being, as intellectual and spiritual units. ”

“ Unless the laws of nature were constant, in so far as our experience extends, we could have [40] no certain basis either for science or for practical life. All would be capricious and uncertain, and we could calculate on nothing. Law thus adapts the universe to be the residence of rational beings, and nothing else could. Viewed in this way, we see that natural laws must be, in their relation to a Creator, voluntary limitations of his power in certain directions for the benefit of his creatures. ”

“ Here a realm of natural law is secured to him covering all that he has ever effectively occupied. And indeed it has been quite as much the purpose of our discussion to secure such a realm where scientific method may work unhindered, as to deal with the nature of that part of our experience which lies beyond it. ”

“ If we suppose, at any point of development, an action not in accord with that which the laws of nature necessitate decided upon by the will, such an action cannot be carried out. But even a decision is impossible contrary to natural law, since in preceding evolution there has been no point at which nature has not in like manner determined action, and the present decision, being the expression of function attained as the result [Pg 347] of evolution, must be as much determined as the action which follows. ”

“ Children learn many principles of natural law at a very early age. For example: they learn that when one child has picked up an apple or a flower, it is his, and that his associates must not take it from him against his will. They also learn that if he voluntarily exchange his apple or flower with a playmate, for some other article of desire, he has thereby surrendered his right to it, and must not reclaim it. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern most of the greatest interests of individuals and society; ”

“ Thus guarded, we much prefer the second of the two conceptions of causation, as the more philosophical as well as Christian view—a view which leaves us with the same difficulties and the same mysteries in Nature as in Providence, and no other. Natural law, upon this view, is the human conception of continued and orderly Divine action.
We do not suppose that less power, or other power, is required to sustain the universe and carry on its operations, than to bring it into being. ”

“ It is true that we may not understand the law that the so-called miracle comes under, but the Author of all natural law does. We do not pretend to dispute but that the Power that made nature's laws can change them if He sees fit ”

“ The very idea of law originates in men's natural rights. There is no other standard, than natural rights, by which civil law can be measured. Law has always been the name of that rule or principle of justice, which protects those rights. Thus we speak of natural law. ”

“ Everything is relentlessly investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discovered to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparently fortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast where the systematisation will end. ”

“ Where is there any point of such a process at which we can suppose the entrance of a totally new principle that cannot be regarded as another expression of force or merely a new form of animal function, but as directly opposed to developed function and to the force that is subject to natural law? ”

“ The metaphysics has been attenuated to something approaching in colorlessness the naturalist's conception of natural law. It is a natural law which, in the guise of "controlling principles," exercises a constraining surveillance over the trend of things ”

“ For by studying the history of the way in which this great Law has been established, we cannot fail to be impressed with the thought that back of all the complex array of living forms in our modern world which go on perpetuating themselves in orderly ways according to natural law, they could have originated only by a direct and real Creation, essentially and radically different from any processes now going on. ”

“ Natural Law explains that He created the principle from which humanity evolved, but that it remains for all living things to make better or worse their own conditions. His laws may be studied and practiced by all human beings, but to claim to know the reasons of the Creator's actions would be to assume His wisdom and knowledge. ”

“ Spirits freed from the environments of the physical plane, with senses quickened to a degree that mortals cannot comprehend, may adjust themselves to occurrences and conditions which to me are deplorable and terrifying, for I confess that I shrink aghast from a contemplation of some of the effects of what science terms natural law, back of which it would seem there must be a Lawmaker who arbitrarily adjusts all things, both good and evil. ”

“ Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it is simply a statement of the manner in which a supernatural power has thought fit to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. ”

“ Add to this that many of the laws of nature have only to be expressed to be admitted—laws whose concretes were objects of observation to our earliest ancestors away back in the youth of life upon our globe, and are, to us at least, intuitive—and we see how natural the attribution of necessity to them appears. Besides this, the word law conveys a meaning entirely outside its scientific acceptation. ”

“ It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or on each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of man is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings, are subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed without interrupting and troubling the general or particular order, those rules of action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of nature. ”

“ Call those conditions by whatever name we may, they have all the characteristics of natural law, or natural orderliness, over which Man has no other powers of command than by adaptation of natural means to artificial ends. Natural law would therefore seem to be the most appropriate name—law beyond the control of Man except by his adaptation of natural resources to artificial effects.
Questions of natural law or no natural law in Economics aside, however, we are confronted by facts which common-sense minds cannot escape. ”

“ The study of these facts, their modes of motion, and the laws which govern them, bring careful philosophers to the conclusion that behind the natural law is an active will, and behind natural force and evolution one universal and intelligent motive power. Mental and spiritual phenomena are ignored—or, for some obscure reason, at any rate neglected—by the ordinary man of science. ”

“ A regular recurrence of phenomena may establish a so called natural law, but the law is that which caused the phenomena, “Law is force” says Hegel, and it is therefore mental. We are told that the law of the earth is its path around the sun. ”

“ We see sequences of natural phenomena, which we call natural laws, and we can no more realize the antecedents of these phenomena than we can conceive an era when our so-called natural laws were neither existent, necessary, nor consequent. ”

“ In the important business of raising these axioms of nature, we are not, as in the analysis of phenomena, left wholly without a guide. The nature of abstract or general reasoning points out in a great measure the course we must pursue. A law of nature, being the statement of what will happen in certain general contingencies, may be regarded as the announcement, in the same words, of a whole group or class of phenomena. ”

“ While the investigation of nature and the interpretation of natural law arc admittedly among the highest, as they are among the most delightful of human occupations, the right application of natural law to effect desirable objects is in itself a scarcely less worthy occupation ”

“ In opposition to this, it is true, some physicists have held that natural law is a fatal necessity. [19] If they mean by this a merely hypothetical necessity that certain effects must follow if certain laws act, this is in accordance with the Biblical view, for nothing can resist the will of God. ”

“ All who are competent to express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. ”

“ The travelling instances, as well as what Bacon terms “frontier instances,” are cases in which we are enabled to trace that general law which seems to pervade all nature—the law, as it is termed, of continuity, and which is expressed in the well known sentence, “Natura non agit per saltum.” The pursuit of this law into cases where its application is not at first sight obvious, has proved a fertile source of physical discovery, and led us to the knowledge of an analogy and intimate connection of phenomena between which at first we should never have expected to find any. ”

“ Unless we make the unscientific and preposterous assumption that our present knowledge of nature and of natural forces is absolute and complete, it is unscientific and illogical to declare at once that any supposed events could not have happened merely because they seem to have contradicted so-called natural laws. ”

“ If we suppose the progress of natural science to lead to the discovery of a single, simple law, which presides over the development of all others, and the application of which, varied according to circumstances, is a sufficient reason of all the phenomena now referred to many and very complicated laws; this would, without doubt, be an immense progress in sciences the object of which is the visible world ”

“ In Nature, in God's creation, we discover only laws—laws of undeviating strictness, and sure penalties annexed for their violation. There is associated with natural laws no system of mercy; that dispensation is not revealed in Nature, and is contained in the Scriptures alone. With the double view just presented, I feel that Science and Religion may walk hand in hand. ”

“ It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law. ”

“ Normal use under law develops health, harmony, and strength, in the one case as in the other, demonstrably; and these laws, accurately formulated and demonstrated, constitute the School of Natural Science, accessible to all prepared to receive and wisely use them ”

“ In fact, everything that we know about the powers and properties of natural objects and about the order of nature may properly be termed a law of nature. But it is desirable to remember that which is very often forgotten, that the laws of nature are not the causes of the order of nature, but only our way of stating as much as we have made out of that order. Stones do not fall to the ground in consequence of the law just stated, as people sometimes carelessly say ”

“ We here confront the fact that many natural laws, and among them the most important, are expressed as, and taken to be, conditions which never occur in reality. This seemingly absurd procedure is, as a matter of fact, the best fitted for scientific purposes, since ideal cases are to be distinguished by this, that with them the natural laws take on the simplest forms. ”

“ A great multitude of people are continually talking of the law of nature; and they go on giving you their sentiments about what is right and what is wrong, and these sentiments, you are to understand, are so many chapters and sections of the law of nature. Instead of the phrase, law of nature, you have sometimes law of reason, right reason, natural justice, natural equity, good order. ”

“ It is evident that the actual laws will never be sufficiently well known for us not to be able to adopt the first of these two solutions and for us to be constrained to infer the evolution of natural laws. ”

“ Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; ”

“ I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists. ”

“ Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. ”

“ Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness. It is easy to see how the establishment of one community made that of all the rest necessary, and how, in order to make head against united forces, the rest of mankind had to unite in turn. ”