Section — Marc, Institutiones Morales
§ 1. On the Existence and Object of Natural Law
- DEFINITION. Natural law (which is also called natural right) is the ordination of God commanding that the natural order be preserved and forbidding that it be disturbed, known through natural light. It is eternal law itself, insofar as the rational creature participates in it.
Therefore human reason is not the source of law, but is the faculty by which law is known (Dichiar. del sistema, n. 19). Hence this 3rd proposition of the Syllabus was proscribed by Pius IX: "Human reason, with no regard whatever had to God, is the sole arbiter of true and false, of good and evil; it is a law to itself, and by its natural powers suffices for caring for the good of men and peoples." The saying smells of insanity: Thus I will, thus I command, let will stand for reason, if indeed it is understood absolutely and without restriction.
DIVISION. In natural law primary and secondary right are distinguished. Primary, or absolute, is called that whose matter has an immediate connection with the essence of God; so that not even indirectly, through added circumstances, can it be changed: for example, you shall not swear falsely, you shall not blaspheme, you shall not tell a lie. Secondary, or hypothetical, is that whose matter concerns created things; which for that reason can be changed indirectly by the dominion over things, namely by God (or also by man, according to the need of the common good): for example, you shall not kill, that is, by private authority; you shall not commit theft, that is, as long as the thing will have been another's. Suarez, de Leg., l. 3, c. 13, n. 5.
- PRINCIPLES. I. Natural law exists. It is evident from the words of the Apostle (Rom. 2:14): The Gentiles who do not have the law (that is, the Mosaic law), naturally do those things which are of the law; not having a law of this kind, they are a law to themselves: who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or also defending.
- II. The object of natural law is everything which so agrees with or repugns to rational nature that, for the preservation of order, it is necessarily prescribed or prohibited by the very Creator of nature. In other words: to the law of nature belong all precepts to which, from the nature of the thing and independently of any positive law whatever, we are bound. This is evident from the very definition of natural law.
"The ORDER OF NATURE is in this," says Reuter (P. I, n. 29), "that a rational creature have himself duly toward God, toward the neighbor, toward himself, and toward other creatures. Now the order toward God requires that he render faith to divine wisdom and veracity; hope and trust to benignity, mercy, omnipotence, and fidelity; love to the highest goodness; ... subjection and obedience to supreme jurisdiction, etc., and that he avoid the opposite vices. The order toward the neighbor requires that he love him, revere parents, obey Superiors, render to each his own, ... exercise the other virtues for an ordered society, and flee the vices opposed to these. The order toward himself requires that appetite be subjected to reason, and reason to God and Superiors. Finally, the order toward the remaining creatures demands that the rational creature use them rightly, as means to the end, and not expend on the means the love due to the end; nor turn them aside from the end to which by their nature and God's intention they are ordered" (cf. n. 379 ff.).
- From these things it is inferred: 1. All acts of virtues belong to the law of nature insofar as in general they are virtuous: for reason dictates that each one act virtuously, even in a merely lawful and indifferent matter. But if the acts of virtues are considered according to themselves, and in their proper species, not all are of natural law. For this does not prescribe all actions conformable to order, but only those which are necessary for the preservation of order, and whose omission is base. Thus, for example, certain virtues, such as virginity and evangelical poverty, can be omitted without sin. Likewise, there are many acts of virtues which are of themselves mere counsel, and are prescribed only by positive law, such as abstinence from meats, and similar things (St. Thomas, 1.2, q. 94, a. 3).
- All sins are against natural law, at least reductively and mediately: for whoever transgresses a positive precept of God or of man, by that very fact violates the order of reason, and the law of subjection which is required by nature (cf. n. 316).