Treatise: On Laws in General

220. Object of the treatise. - After the consideration of human acts in themselves and of their proximate, immediate, and intrinsic rule, which is conscience, there logically follows the treatise on the remote and extrinsic rule, as the extrinsic and regulative principle of conscience itself, according to which acts must be directed to the end, namely, on law, which conscience must apply in each of our actions and thus be conformed and subordinated to it.

In this treatise we shall speak not of individual laws considered specifically, but of law itself and of its supreme species considered in general, namely:

1. of law in general: a) of law in itself, b) of its division, c) of its effects; then in species:

2. of eternal law, 3) of natural law, 4) of human or civil law, 5) of divine law, 6) of ecclesiastical law; and concerning each we shall speak of their a) essence, b) power, c) mutability.

These six parts are reduced to three sections: the first two regard law rather according to psychological being; the next two regard law as the rule of morally good acts, according to moral being; the last two regard law also as the rule of supernatural acts, according to supernatural being.

1. Besides the authors cited for all general morals, and the better-known recent ones, such as St. Alphonsus with his disciples Aertnijs and Marc; Ballerini, Lehmkuhl, Noldin, Genicot, Vermeersch, all from the Society of Jesus; the Mechlin Theology, Haine, and Tanquerey; Prummer from the Order of Preachers, etc., the following can especially be consulted: Suarez, De Legibus; Van den Berghe, Tractatus de Legibus; Waffelaert, De l'obligation en conscience des lois civiles; Dom Lottin, Loi morale naturelle et loi positive; L'ordre moral et l'ordre logique; La definition classique de la loi (in Revue Neo-Scolastique, 1925); Le Droit naturel chez S. Thomas et ses predecesseurs; A. Valensin, Traite de Droit Naturel; B. Kuhlmann, Der Gesetzesbegriff des H. Thomas v. Aquin; Maroto, Institutiones Iuris canonici, I; Van Hove, Commentarium Lovaniense in Cod. I. C., t. II-V; Berutti, Institutiones Iuris canonici, Normae generales.