phenomena of growth and decay. And the fourth is that in these phenomena of growth there is evidence of some sort of force working upon and through the creatures, something wholly irrespective of, and nowise referable to, their volitions, something stronger than they are, and which determines the course of their life-processes.

The second observation is that among human beings there is a similar identity of dominant characteristics combined with an endless diversity of individuals, a diversity greater than that between different individuals of each lower species. In all men, however otherwise unlike, there may be noted the same general tendencies, the same appetites, passions, emotions. It is these passions and emotions that move men's actions, and move them upon principles and in ways which are always essentially the same, despite the contrasts which one man presents to another, despite the jars and conflicts in each man which spring from the fact that passion may urge him in one direction, and interest in another, while fear my arrest action altogether. Thus there is formed the conception of a general constitution of man as man, over and above all the peculiarities of each individual, a constitution which is not of his own making, but is given to him in germ at the outset of his life, and is developed with the expansion of his physical and mental powers. The most notable marks of this constitution of man as man are therefore its Origin at his birth, and its unfolding in the process of his Growth. So here also the phenomena of Birth and Growth stand out as the notes of that sort of unity which includes all mankind and makes Man what he is.

The language in which I am seeking to present these conceptions, though untechnical, is inevitably tinged by our modern habits of thought. But we may well believe that in substance such conceptions were present to persons of a reflective turn long before a set of abstract terms in which to express them had been invented.

They had worked themselves into the texture of educated minds, and had been conveyed in figurative language by poets before metaphysicians laid hold of the

matter.

When metaphysicians appear, that is to say, when thought, consciously speculative, begins to attempt systematic and comprehensive solutions of the problems of the universe which it has begun to realize as problems, a new period opens. Looking round upon the animated (and now also with a clearer eye upon the inanimate) world, philosophers feel the need of finding a Cause for the regularity they observe in the working of physical forces and in the growth of living creatures upon settled and uniform lines. They conclude that there must exist a power, either personal-a Deity or Deities or impersonal, a sort of immanent and irresistible force in things themselves, which has stamped its will or tendency upon the movements and processes of the material universe. They discover analogies between the action of such a Power in the inanimate and in the animated world, and between its action on other animals and its action on man. Thus they figure it to themselves as governing both on somewhat similar principles, and aiming at somewhat similar ends. The name they give it is drawn from Birth. It is uois, Natura, Nature.

When they apply this method of inquiry or way of considering phenomena to Man regarded, not as a mere animal, but as a rational being, they find in him complex faculties and impulses working towards certain ends, ends which, despite infinite differences of detail, are substantially the same for all men. They note certain characteristics and tendencies which they call Normal, as being those prescribed by the general rules of his moral and physical constitution, and they deem every thing varying therefrom to be either a morbid aberration, or a fact of quite secondary consequence. And as in the wider sphere of animated being, so in that

of man taken by himself, they conceive his constitution as being the result of a Power which has framed it with an intelligent purpose, so harmonizing its various activities as to fit them to attain a main and central end. Just as in the animal organism all the forces and processes of the body are so united as best to subserve its development, so in man regarded as a thinking being all the capacities, intellectual and emotional, seem to be correlated and guided by a presiding influence, that of the Rational Will, in obedience to which all the parts and all the impulses find their proper line of action. Thus that central and supreme power which in the material universe has been called Nature comes to be called in man Reason, and conversely, Nature is conceived of as necessarily Rational. For as in the universe at large the general tendency of things and that which makes their harmony is thought of, not merely as a fact, but also as a principle or pervading force, not merely as the sum of the phenomena, but also as a Power ruling the phenomena, so when a similar canon is applied by analogy to man, this power is found in Reason. And the recognition of reason as the harmonizing principle in man causes Nature, the force which gives to all things their shape and character, to be conceived of as an intelligent force moulding phenomena upon settled lines to definite ends.

Thus the conception of Nature, when it is ready to be applied to human society, includes two elements. One is that of Uniformity or Normality-the idea that the essence and ruling principle in all kinds of objects and beings and processes resides in that which they have in common, i.e. in the Type which runs through them. The other element is that of Force and Controlthe idea that types have been formed and that processes work under the guidance of an intelligent Power, a power which in the case of the material universe may or may not be what is called conscious and personal (since as to this philosophers differ), but whose analogue

in man is conscious and personal. Thus Nature and Reason are brought very near: or at any rate, there is what may be called a rational quality in Nature.

This view of nature and her processes as characterized by uniformity of action, and this view of such uniformity as necessarily due to some directing Force, took shape, at a more advanced stage of thought than the stage we are now considering, in the much canvassed expression Laws of Nature 1. This term, used to describe the uniformity of sequence in the phenomena of the material universe, opens up a line of reflection with which I am not here directly concerned. It is due to an imagined analogy between an ordered community, whose members obey rules made for them by a governing authority, and the ordered universe, every part of whose machinery works with a regularity which suggests rational direction by an irresistible Force. As laws are the framework of a State, so the sequences in the processes of Nature are deemed to be the framework of the external world. With the (moral) Law of Nature I am about to discuss these Laws of Nature-physical or external Nature-have of course nothing to do. In the latter, Nature, meaning the aggregate of natural phenomena, is passive, and obeys laws set to her; whereas the expression Law of Nature' represents her as the power which makes and prescribes laws. The 'Laws of Nature' are deemed to be imposed upon the world of nature by the Power which rules it, or, as the Greeks would say, they are laws given to the Kosmos by the Demiurgos; whereas our (moral) Law of Nature' is (as will presently appear) the law which Nature herself (or God the author of Nature') sets to mankind, her children. Nevertheless in the expression Laws of Nature' (in the physical sense) the word Nature is sometimes used to describe, not only the passive subject which

1 The term has been extended from material phenomena to those dealt with by other sciences, such as economics and philology (e.g. laws of supply and demand, 'Grimm's law').

obeys, but also the active ruler who commands: and this double usage has tended to induce confusion. It may be partly responsible for the phrase 'a violation of the Laws of Nature,' though obviously a Law of Nature cannot be violated. All that phrase can mean is that men may, ignorantly or knowingly, act in disregard of a certain sequence of physical phenomena, receiving the inevitable recompense1. By the ancients, the two notions were not confounded, and indeed the phrase 'Laws of Nature,' in the precise sense it bears to moderns, occurs very rarely among them, as one may indeed say that the idea in any such sense as ours was by them but faintly apprehended 2. But, distinct as these conceptions are, they have in common the notion that Reason as a Power presides over and orders all things. And Wordsworth has in a noble passage boldly identified with the moral law the Force which directs the majestically uniform march of the celestial bodies, when he says of Duty

'Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens by Thee are fresh and strong.' Now let us turn to the phenomena of political society and see how the conception works itself out in this field.

II. ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPTION OF NATURAL LAW.

When the observer applies himself to social phenomena, he perceives again, as he has perceived in studying the whole animated creation, two facts equally patent

1 He who steals, breaks the law and may or may not be discovered or punished: he who puts his finger in the fire finds in the pain he suffers the operation of the regular sequence of physical phenomena.

? There is a passage in a Constitution of the Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius (Cod. Theod. Bk. xvi, Tit. x. 12) in which the term 'laws of Nature' is used in a sense which seems to come near the modern one. Forbidding any one to sacrifice victims or consult the 'spirantia exta,' the Emperors, after threatening punishment as in the case of treason, proceed to say, 'Sufficit ad criminis molem naturae ipsius leges velle rescindere, inlicita perscrutari, occulta recludere, interdicta temptare.' The expression may however mean nothing more than that it is impious to tamper with the principles which keep the secrets of nature from men's eyes. But in any case it is used in a sense different from that of the moral law which the ancients conceived to have been set by nature.