Natural order

“ We may readily believe that there is, in this part of the creation also, an order, a subordination of some relations to others, which may remove all difficulty arising from the vast multitude of moral agents and actions, and make it possible that the superintendence of the moral world shall be directed with as exact a tendency to moral good, as that by which the government of the physical world is directed to physical good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rules of conduct which right reason manifests to us, and conscience, the voice of God, commands us to follow, constitute the natural law, which is a participation in human reason of the eternal law of God, willing that right order should be observed, forbidding it to be disturbed. ”

“ And notwithstanding its many real, and many apparent irregularities, there is also a settled order of causes and effects in the human system, as well as in the material world. The foundation of this settled order is, the sameness of human nature in its animal intellectual and moral constitution, of which the anomalies are never so great as to break up all resemblance to the common pattern. Then those conventional modes of thinking and acting which sway the conduct of the mass of mankind, strengthen the tendency to uniformity, and greatly counteract all disturbing causes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now at the outset we must note that, while the conceptions of law and order have been universally received as the governing principles of the phenomena of nature in the sphere of physical science, yet their intrusion into the domain of history and the life of man has always been met with a strong opposition, on the ground of the incalculable nature of two great forces acting on human action, a certain causeless spontaneity which men call free will, and the extra-natural interference which they attribute as a constant attribute to God. ”

“ The laws of nature having subjected mankind to a state of absolute dependence on something out of it, and manifestly beyond themselves, or the compound exertion of their natural powers, gave them the first conception of a superior principle existing ”

“ The promulgation of this supreme law to creatures, is co-extensive and co-existent with reason, and binding on all intelligent beings in the universe; and is that eternal rule of fitness, as applicable to God, by which the creator of all things conducts his infinitude of providence, and by which he governs the moral system of being, according to the absolute perfection of his nature. ”

“ But here is the condition of existence which all these establishments must conform to. Everything in nature has a certain constant mode of action: this we call a law of nature. The laws of nature are universal, unchangeable, and perfect as God, whose mind they in part express. To succeed in anything, we must find out and keep the natural laws relating thereto. There are such laws for the individual—constant modes of action which belong to human nature, writ therein by God. My mind and conscience are the faculties by which I learn these laws. ”

“ These formulas we call natural laws. If a natural law covers all cases of a class that have come or even that possibly can come within the range of our experience, if it agrees with every one of them, we call it a truth. ”

“ The fact of things being of a certain constitution, and of their progress tending in a certain direction, cannot of itself supply a law for the exercise of our activity. But the view is associated with a theory of the nature of human action which seeks to bring it into the strict line of natural development. ”

“ In that connection Man is governed by natural law, a manifest law of human nature. It resembles the familiar law of external nature in obedience to which physical force advances along the line of least resistance. ”

“ It shows this law to be truly transcendental, belonging not to transient material forms or physiological structure, nor to special psychical constitutions of men or races, nor organized instinct, nor subjective mental illusion, nor peculiar hereditary experience, nor transformed sense of realized or supposed utility, nor any local adventitious circumstances and training, but to the supreme super-sensible realm of universal and necessary ideas and truth, in which the universe of rational thought and divine order lives and moves and has its being and welfare. ”

“ All that we now know is, that the natural laws of this system are universal, invariable, unbending; that physical and moral tendencies are the same all over our world; and we have every reason to believe, over all other worlds. ”

“ In its broad general principles, indeed, it has been known and taught at all times; it would be impossible for human society to continue unless the general principles of the natural law were known and acted on. ”

“ The same is true of the Organic and the Inorganic worlds, of the Human and the Non-human worlds, of the Physical and the Moral worlds, of the Cosmical and the Social worlds, of the law of Progress and the law of Order. On all sides we are confronted with a series of Antinomies, Dualisms, and irreducible ultimate conceptions. ”

“ When we speak of material nature as being governed by laws, it is sufficiently evident that we use the term in a manner somewhat metaphorical. The laws to which man’s attention is primarily directed are moral laws ”

“ The constitution of nature as an ever-unfolding order, the laws of life, the laws of mind, and the laws of social relation, are successively expounded with a view to their final bearing upon the right and wrong of human actions. ”

“ We have already shewn, that men invented the three fundamental laws of nature, when they observed the necessity of society to their mutual subsistance, and found, that it was impossible to maintain any correspondence together, without some restraint on their natural appetites. ”

“ Secondly, The natural government of the world is carried on by general laws. For this there may be wise and good reasons: the wisest and best, for aught we know to the contrary. And that there are such reasons, is suggested to our thoughts by the analogy of nature; by our being made to experience good ends to be accomplished, as indeed all the good which we enjoy is accomplished, by this means,—viz.: that the laws, by which the world is governed, are general. ”

“ However, we [Pg 353] know of natural law merely as an expression of uniformities, a generalization from the relations of things; we have no reason for treating it as extraneous to the nature of things themselves; and nature itself furnishes us with no reason for supposing the relations of things to be of more significance than things themselves; relations are not entities.
If man be part of nature, it is strange that the force within him should be regarded as so shaped and compelled, the force without him, on the other hand, as so compelling and mighty. ”

“ It is the universal natural force that also regulates human life. And what do we see in human life? A fearful amount of moral and physical evil which is not prevented, but rather in part begotten by that regulator. ”

“ They can be inherent in our [154] nature only in the second sense, and in our moral nature only, and consequently are held under the law which founds and sustains moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order. ”

“ It is indeed difficult to conceive that one set of principles should guide the natural life, and these at a certain period—the very point where they are needed—suddenly give place to another set of principles altogether new and unrelated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a tenable proposition that they are the most tremendous power in the world; and yet we may hold that they take effect through the natural law alone, and have come into existence through the courses of evolution—or, if you like to put it so—in a faithful following of the Will which, in the act of Creation, made a compact and kept it. ”

“ It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as an instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men. The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion of the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual universe of matter and spirit. ”

“ Those who have dispensed with the assumption of such a universal standard, have only been enabled to do so by supposing that a moral sense, or instinct, inherent in our constitution, informs us, both what principles of conduct we are bound to observe, and also in what order these should be subordinated to one another. ”

“ And for this reason—that though Nature lays down the great constitutional laws within which man, her completest representative, must work; and though Nature as a whole formulates the main outlines of her ideal; yet man within that constitution can make his own laws, and within its main outlines may refine and perfect the ideal. ”

“ The question, What are the natural laws by which human societies have originated, been developed to their present state, and must still further advance?—the laws, therefore, by which their destiny is governed—is supreme at the present time. ”

“ I understand the laws of nature to be those forms, modes, or methods according to which it necessarily operates in its various developments. When any tendency or action of nature is observed to be uniform under given circumstances throughout the sphere of our knowledge, we infer that a certain law or necessity governs it. ”

“ Those uniform laws are, so far as we can judge, the method by which the ordinary course of nature is carried on. That is to say, if we recognize the ordinary course of nature as designed [260] by a Supreme Being, that it is according to His will that the course of Nature should, as a rule, be carried on in this regular methodical manner, we should expect, therefore, to find the operation of regular laws in the moral, no less than in the physical world, although their existence is less obvious on account of the freedom of the will .... ”

“ In whatever manner voluntary and moral agency depend upon the Supreme Being, it must be [281] in some such way that they still continue to bear the character of will, action, and morality. And, though too exclusive an attention to material phenomena may sometimes have made physical philosophers blind to this manifest difference, it has been clearly seen and plainly asserted by those who have taken the most comprehensive views of the nature and tendency of science. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Just as we find natural laws. When we find the truth of natural bodies, reason sees the laws which inhere in them, and prudence dictates [221] such action on our part as these laws require. When we come to truth, on the moral plane, or to such knowledge of the facts as corresponds to the truth, reason, unless perverted, sees the laws that reside in them, and conscience dictates that these laws should be obeyed. Conscience unerringly and infallibly approves the right. ”

“ We can discover [Pg vii] the actual conditions of natural law, under which we exist and promote the knowledge of that truth among our fellows. To do that which is right, we must know that which is true. To act rightly, we must know truly. ”

“ Take human nature, as that particular division of Universal Nature which we must consider in this discussion. There are elements, properties, qualities and capabilities essential to the constitution of a human being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the one hand, we have the human mind obeying the laws of its own existence, and, when uncontrolled by external agents, developing itself according to the conditions of its organization. On the other hand, we have what is called Nature, obeying likewise its 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. ”

“ Hence we infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times and in all places where the effects of the law occur; that thus the knowledge and the agency of the divine Being pervades every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The laws of nature are the laws which He, in his wisdom, prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events; his universal agency the only origin of any efficient force.”—Bridgewater Treatise, p. ”