No doubt there is a natural law, which is law in the proper sense of the word law; but this is a positive law under which nature is placed by a sovereign above herself, and is never to be confounded with those laws of nature so-called, according to which she is productive as second cause, or produces her effects, which are not properly laws at all.Fire burns, water flows, rain falls, birds fly, fishes swim, food nourishes, poisons kill, one substance has a chemical affinity for another, the needle points to the pole, by a natural law, it is said; that is, the effects are produced by an inherent and uniform natural force.
Laws in this sense are simply physical forces, and are nature herself.The natural law, in an ethical sense, is not a physical law, is not a natural force, but a law impose by the Creator on all moral creatures, that is, all creatures endowed with reason and free-will, and is called natural because promulgated in natural reason, or the reason common and essential to all moral creatures.This is the moral law.It is what the French call le droit naturell, natural right, and, as the theologians teach us, is the transcript of the eternal law, the eternal will or reason of God.It is the foundation of all law, and all acts of a state that contravene it are, as St.Augustine maintains, violences rather than laws.The moral law is no development of nature, for it is above nature, and is imposed on nature.The only development there is about it is in our understanding of it.
There is, of course, development in nature, for nature considered as creation has been created in germ, and is completed only in successive developments.Hence the origin of space and time.
There would have been no space if there had been no external creation, and no time if the creation had been completed externally at once, as it was in relation to the Creator.Ideal space is simply the ability of God to externize his creative act, and actual space is the relation of coexistence in the things created; ideal time is the ability of God to create existences with the capacity of being completed by successive developments, and actual time is the relation of these in the order of succession, and when the existence is completed or consummated development ceases, and time is no more.In relation to himself the Creator's works are complete from the first, and hence with him there is no time, for there is no succession.But in relation to itself creation is incomplete, and there is room for development, which may be continued till the whole possibility of creation is actualized.Here is the foundation of what is true in the modern doctrine of progress.Man is progressive, because the possibilities of his nature are successively unfolded and actualized.
Development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be scientifically ascertained and defined.All generation is development, as is all growth, physical, moral, or intellectual.
But everything is developed in its own order, and after its kind.
The Darwinian theory of the development of species is not sustained by science.The development starts from the germ, andin the germ is given the law or principle of the development.
>From the acorn is developed the oak, never the pine or the linden.Every kind generates its kind, never another.But no development is, strictly speaking, spontaneous, or the result alone of the inherent energy or force of the germ developed.
There is not only a solidarity of race, but in some sense of all races, or species; all created things are bound to their Creator, and to one another.One and the same law or principle of life pervades all creation, binding the universe together in a unity that copies or imitates the unity of the Creator.No creature is isolated from the rest, or absolutely independent of others.All are parts of one stupendous whole, and each depends on the whole, and the whole on each, and each on each.All creatures are members of one body, and members one of another.The germ of the oak is in the acorn, but the acorn left to itself alone can never grow into the oak, any more than a body at rest can place itself in motion.Lay the acorn away in your closet, where it is absolutely deprived of air, heat, and moisture, and in vain will you watch for its germination.Germinate it cannot without some external influence, or communion, so to speak, with the elements from which it derives its sustenance and support.
There can be no absolutely spontaneous development.All things are doubtless active, for nothing exists except in so far as it is an active force of some sort; but only God himself alone suffices for his own activity.All created things are dependent, have not their being in themselves, and are real only as they participate, through the creative act, of the Divine being.The germ can no more be developed than it could exist without God, and no more develop itself than it could create itself.What is called the law of development is in the germ; but that law or force can operate only in conjunction with another force or other forces.All development, as all growth, is by accretion or assimilation.The assimilating force is, if you will, in the germ, but the matter assimilated comes and must come from abroad.
Every herdsman knows it, and knows that to rear his stock he must supply them with appropriate food; every husbandman knows it, and knows that to raise a crop of corn, be must plant the seed in a soil duly prepared, and which will supply the gases needed for its germination, growth, flowering, boiling, and ripening.In all created things, in all things not complete in themselves, in all save God, in whom there is no development possible, for He is, as say the schoolmen, most pure act, in whom there is no unactualized possibility, the same law holds good.Development is always the resultant of two factors, the one the thing itself, the other some external force co-operating with it, exciting it, and aiding it to act.
