The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

VI.

The authority of the laws which govern society is not found in the fact that the laws have been made by the will of the majority, or the will of the minority, or by the will of a king, or by the wills of any or all of the people; but because they are founded in the constitution of human nature. The basis for the constitution of human nature is the mind of God, who created man in his own image. Social laws have authority, then, because they are consonant with the nature of man, and have their source in the will of God.

It is easy to show, however, from the records of history, that nations have often lived under laws imposed upon them that contradicted every principle of human nature. Men were accustomed once to find the laws of society as well as the laws of nature, not from the study of men, or from the study of the objects of nature, but in the depths of their own imaginations. In former times men met in convention and council and determined by resolution the shape of the earth and the sun’s method of movement. They also subjected themselves to the criticism of posterity by cutting the heads of the people off who did not agree with them. But it gradually dawned on the human mind that to find out for certain the shape of the earth it might be well to devote a little study to the earth itself. Thus it happened that in the course of events men ceased to read laws into God’s material universe from the boundless realms of their fancy and conceit, and fell upon the more rational habit of taking the laws that were already there. Herein is the difference between mediæval and modern times.

The disposition to read laws into nature, without reference to the facts of nature, was in line with the programme to read laws into the social realm without reference to the facts of human nature. The laws of astronomy to-day are such as have been found by a study of the stars. The laws of chemistry are such as have been found by a study of the atomic structures of bodies. One might fall out now with the celestial laws of Ptolemy, and head a movement to set them aside. But it is not rational to fall out with the astronomical laws of Norman Lockyer, for that is to buck against the sun, and to make faces at the stars. Lockyer’s laws came straight to him from the skies, and find their value and verification in the close calculation of every steamer that sails on the wide, restless sea. The laws of civilized nations to-day are such as have been found by a study of the facts of human nature. To quarrel with them is to set one’s self against the way man is built. It would not do to say that the social laws of civilized peoples to-day are exact transcripts from the will of God concerning the conduct of social life. Men do not now, and perhaps will not for a long time, read aright the facts of human nature. One thing is certain, however: in the making of laws among civilized, republican peoples, reference is had to the facts of human nature, and not to the fancy of those who wish to govern. It cannot be disputed that the right facts are considered from which to make deductions. This means a complete change of front in the modern world over the ages past. There are doubtless many minor laws on the statute books of the liberal and progressive nations of the earth to-day which are not in accordance with the nature of man; but it seems that any rational person is compelled to admit that the great legal trunk-lines conform to the essential laws of human nature. Take the Constitution of the United States. Some one has said that the apple from which Newton deduced the laws of gravity was two thousand years falling. He would have been nearer the truth if he had said six thousand years. The Constitution of the United States is as clearly a deduction from the facts of human nature, as were the laws of gravity from a study of falling bodies. The convention that met in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution of the United States, in 1787, was called to order on the top of the centuries. The members had such advantage of position as made it possible for them to look all down the ages. They were in a position to see all sides of human nature, under all forms of government.

In the preamble to the Constitution, they specified certain objects for which, in their esteem, this government should be formed—union, domestic tranquillity, justice, liberty, welfare. Any government constituted by a document like that has for the basis of its existence the facts of human nature, as really as the law of gravity has for the basis of its existence the facts of the stars.