[1] Balzac, Le Père Goriot (ed. Paris, Calman Lévy, 1891), p. 85.
II
THE CONSTITUTIVE ELEMENTS OF LAWS. CRITIQUE OF PERMISSIVE LAWS AND OF NATURAL LAW
The volitional character and the character of class.
The undue restrictions and empirical divisions of the concept of laws having been destroyed, if our attention be now directed to the character that has been determined as properly belonging to them, we have the means of distinguishing them from the other spiritual forms with which they are often confused, partly as the result of the metaphors and homonyms usual in ordinary speech. Laws, as has been said, are volitional acts concerning classes of actions. Therefore, where the volitional element or the element of class is wanting, there cannot be law, save in name and by metaphor.
Distinction of laws from the so-called laws of nature.
So-called laws of nature or naturalistic laws are not laws, owing to the absence of the volitional element: they consist of simple enunciations of relations between empirical concepts, that is, of rules. This is an instance of what is called a natural law: platinum melts at a temperature of 1780 degrees; or this other of a grammatical law: that in the Greek language masculine nouns of the second declension have the genitive in ου(with exceptions, in this as in the other case). But they are laws in about the same way as the King of Cups is king; and indeed it is known historically that this denomination was transported by the Stoics from the domain of politics, where it had first appeared, to that of nature. Empirical concepts and rules may, as we know, assume an imperative literary form; hence it will be said: "If you wish to melt platinum, heat it to 1780 degrees"; "If you wish to speak Greek, decline masculine nouns of the second declension with an ου in the genitive." But the literary form does not change anything of their true nature: those imperatives are hypothetical imperatives, that is, false imperatives, improper laws. Grammatical and chemical laws will remain mere formulæ, instruments of knowledge, and not at all of action, until some one obliges me or I oblige myself to talk Greek, or to open a chemical laboratory where platinum is melted. The jurist who elaborates cases and rules is not the legislator: the latter alone (with a sword in one hand) can endow the excogitations cf the other with the character of law.