Natural law is the eternal law in its application to creatures
endowed with reason, and as such cannot long remain hidden
from an enquiring mind. Its decrees are not inscribed on
tablets of stone, or wood, or written pages, but on a man's
heart. Its promptings are ever present, and defy forgetting.
The light vouchsafed by nature to all her sons is able to con-
vey notions of the natural law, and interpret its dictates. No
training in the schools is needed, no labor over long lists of
rules and regulations. These features, peculiar to natural
law, constitute another vast difference between itself and posi-
tive law, whether human or divine. Positive law is of no
avail whatever, unless promulgated or brought to man's no-
tice by some such external sign as language, written or spoken.
Any body of positive laws can of course include obligations
and restrictions already imposed by the natural law. In fact,
owing to the weakness inherent in men's minds and wills, it
is eminently proper for legislators to insist in clearer terms



54 GENERAL ETHICS

on points already defined by the natural law. This method
has a twofold advantage. It makes ignorance less excusable,
and adds to the sanction, already awaiting in the next life
every violence done the natural law, the further punishment
of immediate fine, pain or imprisonment. Law is only then
purely and simply positive, when it decrees things not pre-
viously settled by natural law ; when it turns on acts, which,
in themselves indifferent, become right or wrong according to
the good pleasure or wishes of a superior. Positive divine
law has God for immediate author. Human positive law
has man for immediate author. This human law is either
ecclesiastical or civil.
