Natural right

“ Tho' the rules of justice be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species. ”

“ By natural or moral law is meant the principles of natural right and wrong—the principles of natural justice, if we use the term justice in its widest sense to include all forms of rightful action. Right or justice is of two kinds, distinguished as natural and positive. Natural justice is justice as it is in deed and in truth—in its perfect idea. Positive justice is justice as it is conceived, recognised, and expressed, more or less incompletely and inaccurately, by the civil or some other form of human and positive law. ”

“ The ultimate thing was not natural law as before, not merely principles of eternal validity, but natural rights, certain qualities inherent in man and demonstrated by reason, which natural law exists to secure and to which positive law ought to give effect. Later these natural rights came to be the bane of juristic thinking. ”

“ Even this life is regulated by natural conditions, but it is the goal of man, who is a free being, to overcome the fatalism of Nature with his free-will actions, which are the basis of morality and progress in the higher sense. ”

“ This principle is so obvious, and so fully illustrated in the observance and violation of natural laws, that it seems quite unaccountable that any intelligent mind should hesitate to see and acknowledge its truth. The enjoyment of health, riches, honors, or any other form of natural or worldly happiness, is readily seen to be the result of obeying the laws which relate to these things. ”

“ Men had to be utterly divorced from Nature before they could prefer the hot stench of their dungeons to the cool breezes of heaven, but our system of ethics has proved itself equal to the task. For eighteen hundred years our spiritual guides have taught us to consider Nature and everything natural as wholly evil, and to substitute therefor the supernatural and the artificial, in physical as well as in moral life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Æsthetics, in fact, are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious civilisation, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. ”

“ It is a perfect rule of right for all moral and social beings. It is that eternal rule of right to which God himself conforms.
§3. The law of nature, as a rule of human action, arises out of man's relation to his Maker and to his fellow men. As a creature, he must be subject to the laws of his Creator, on whom he is dependent. He is also in a measure dependent upon his fellow beings. All being created equal, each is bound by the principles of natural justice to render to others that assistance which is necessary to make them as happy as himself, or which they justly owe to him in return. ”

“ 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 enough to say that my source of information is entirely reliable. By your own act you have placed yourself outside of the pale. If you break a natural law, Nature exacts the just penalty. It is the same in the moral field. ”

“ They can all be solved by appeals to Nature Fore, which holds up an ideal of mankind physically able to enjoy all the benefits and to conquer all the dangers of civilization. It is not looking back, but looking in and forward that reveals what natural law promises to those who obey it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Far, therefore, from fearing, from the influence of the Theory of Evolution, a subversion of all accepted moral law and a destructive emancipation of Egoism, we, on the contrary, look forward to a system of Ethics erected upon the indestructible foundation of unchanging natural law, since at the same time with the clear recognition of our true place in nature, the study of Anthropogeny opens to us the comprehension of the necessary character of our old rules of duty. ”

“ Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgement and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. ”

“ Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. ”

“ In consequence of which mutual connection of justice and human felicity, he has not perplexed the law of nature with a multitude of abstracted rules and precepts, referring merely to the fitness or unfitness of things, as some have vainly surmised; but has graciously reduced the rule of obedience to this one paternal precept, “that man should pursue his own happiness.” This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ She had been brought up among people who imagine they see the operations of natural law in the artificial conventions of morality that differ for every age and race and creed, really for every individual. ”

“ The energy of the human mind is prodigious in the disclosure of natural principles, and its activity must be measured on a scale of endless progression. Nature is correct and righteous in all her operations; man is wrong only when he deviates from her laws. Our errors, our prejudices, and our vices, are so many instances of a departure from the beneficial laws of moral and physical existence, and our education is calculated to favour this unfortunate dereliction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The appeal to a Law of Nature so often made in the history of ethical speculation has furnished but a vague and elusive norm. He who makes it is apt to fall back upon the moral intuitions with which he is furnished, and to pack a greater or less number of them into his notion of Natural Law. ”

“ He has also to acknowledge what he owes to Nature, what is his duty to Nature. And that duty he has to perform and her authority he has to admit. He can retain his freedom and initiative and enterprise. But he has to obey the laws of Nature, acknowledge her authority, submit to her discipline. ”

“ And we may again easily determine, if we are not willing in such a case to trust our feelings, which of these is indeed the case, by this simple rule, that if the rare occurrence is the result of the complete fulfillment of a natural law, it will be beautiful; if of the violation of a natural law, it will be ugly. ”

“ The last class of objections to the theory of natural moral perceptions which it is necessary for me to notice, arises from a very mischievous equivocation in the word natural.132 The term natural man is sometimes regarded as synonymous with man in his primitive or barbarous condition, and sometimes as expressing all in a civilised man that is due to nature as distinguished from artificial habits or acquirements. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Æsthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change. ”

“ It never did, nor can exist; as it is inconsistent with the preservation and perpetuation of the race. It is, therefore, a great misnomer to call it the state of nature. Instead of being the natural state of man, it is, of all conceivable states, the most opposed to his nature — most repugnant to his feelings, and most incompatible with his wants. His natural state is, the social and political — the one for which his Creator made him, and the only one in which he can preserve and perfect his race. ”

“ Nor can it be used to designate the more primary, for in that case, again, the later developments of benevolence and truthfulness should be rejected.
The word can have but one other sense, namely, as opposed to artificial. But what is in man artificial and what is natural? It seems that the natural is understood as that which is not the work of human intention and reflection, of labor, and of education. ”

“ We have hitherto considered only cases in which a knowledge of natural laws enables us to improve our condition, by counteracting evils of which, but for its possession, we must have remained forever the helpless victims. ”

“ These combine with your own individual endowments by nature to make you a separate and distinct being, and you grow more separate and distinct by developing nature's gifts, traits, powers,—in brief, that which is essentially your own. Thus nature becomes your ally and sees to it with absolute certainty that you are not like other people. Following this principle of action you cannot know, nor can any one know, to just what you may attain. All true growth is from within, outward. In the tree, natural law prevents distortion or exaggeration of one part over another. ”

“ We call natural law, the principles which govern man considered as a moral being, that is, as an intelligent and free being, intended to live in the society of other beings, intelligent and free like himself.”12 Ulpian's famous tripartite division, of natural law, the law of nations, and the civil law, is proof, from the meaning he attaches to them, either of a misunderstanding or of the imperfect idea which the Stoics had conceived of the essence of natural law. ”

“ The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise the practical results of the improvement of natural knowledge, and its beneficial influence on material civilization, it must, I think, be admitted that the great ideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical spirit which I have endeavoured to sketch, in the few moments which remained at my disposal, constitute the real and permanent significance of natural knowledge. ”

“ Unless, therefore, we will allow, that nature has establish'd a sophistry, and render'd it necessary and unavoidable, we must allow, that the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially, tho' necessarily from education, and human conventions. ”

“ Nature is taken in two senses; as the physical order or the physical laws constitutive of the physical universe, and as the moral law under which all creatures endowed with reason and free-will are placed by the Creator, and which is cognizable by natural reason or the reason common to all men. In the first sense, these rights are not inherent in our nature as men, nor from nature, or in nature; for they are not physical. Physical rights are a contradiction in terms. ”

“ To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature. ”

“ i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right.5
1. ”

“ To be natural means, to dare to be as immoral as Nature is. ”

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

“ In the same manner, as there is a difference between works of nature and productions of human handicraft, so there is a difference between God's rule, providence, and intention in reference to all natural forces, and our rule, providence, and intention in reference to things which are the objects of our rule, providence, and intention. This lesson is the principal object of the whole Book of Job; ”