It belongs not to me to decide; for in this case, as in all those of a similar kind, the line of conduct to be followed ought to be traced by the only competent authority; but the problem is worth proposing, and by it alone it is already easy to throw great light on the abysses to which the atheism of the law is leading the people by rapid strides.
X.—CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF NATURAL LAW.
It remains to explain in a few words the great principles which should form the basis of law, and which were never completely ignored until these days of aberration and wretchedness. I could not expect to give here, in these few pages, a course of natural law, nor even to trace its outline; but there are some perfectly incontestable truths which it is very necessary to recall since people have forgotten them. When one has no personal authority, he feels a certain timidity in broaching so grave a subject, and in speaking of it as if he aspired to enlighten his kind; and meanwhile error is insinuated, preached, disseminated, commanded, with a skill so infernal and a success so great that ignorance of truth is almost unbounded. Of such elementary rules we often find influential persons, and sometimes persons of real merit, totally ignorant. In other days they would have known them on leaving school, or even from their catechism.
Let us go back, then, to the definition of the word nature, and it will serve as a starting-point from which to treat of what the laws destined to govern man should be.
The nature of a being is that which renders it capable of attaining its end. This is true of a plant or an animal as well as of man; but there are two kinds of ends subordinate one to the other. The end for which God created the world could be no other than God himself.[71] The Creator could only propose to himself an end worthy of himself, and, he alone being perfect, he could not find outside himself an end proportioned to his greatness. God is, then, the last end of all creatures. But there are particular ends; and it is in their subordination that the order of the world consists. The primary ends are, in a certain sense, but a means for arriving at the last end.
But God being unable to add anything to his infinite perfection, the end which he proposed to himself could not be to render himself more perfect; hence he could seek only an exterior glory, which consists in manifesting himself to his creatures. For this it was necessary that some of these creatures should be capable of knowing him. These reasonable creatures are superior to the others and are their primary end; therefore it is that theologians call man a microcosm, a compendium of the universe, and king of the world.
Man is placed in creation to admire it, and by means of it to render homage to God; for, in his quality of a creature gifted with reason, he knows his end, which is God, and the essential characteristic of his nature is the ability to attain this end. He is, moreover, endowed with an admirable prerogative—liberty, or free-will; that is to say, he is called on to will this end; and God, in his infinite bounty, will recompense him for having willed his own good. But man has need of an effort to will good; for his primitive nature has been corrupted by the original fall. He has, therefore, an inclination to evil, against which he must incessantly struggle; and the greatest number of political and social errors have their source in ignorance or forgetfulness of this perversion of human nature.
This granted, the natural law comprises the obligations imposed on man in order that he may reach his end, together with the prohibition of all that could turn him away from it. This law obliges all men, even those who have no knowledge of the positive divine law—that is to say, the revealed law.
Behold how Gerson has defined it:
“The natural law is a sign imprinted upon the heart of every man enjoying the right use of reason, and which makes known to him the divine will, in virtue of which the human creature is required to do certain things and to avoid certain others, in order to reach his end.” Among the precepts which God has engraved upon the hearts of all men is found, in the first rank, that which obliges them to refer themselves to God as to their last end.