upposed to be a command or a prohibition
to act in certain cases, accompanied with the natural sanction of
_reward and punishment_. After giving several examples of "natural
laws," which are all merely _general facts_ or the generalized results
of experience, he describes man's relation to these laws almost in the
words of Mr. Combe. "Since all these, and similar facts," he says, "are
unchangeable, constant, and regular, there result for man as many true
laws to which he must conform, with the express clause of a _penalty
attached to their infraction_, or of a benefit attached to their
observance; so that if a man shall pretend to see well in the dark, if
he acts in opposition to the course of the seasons or the action of the
elements, if he pretends to live under water without being drowned, or
to touch fire without being burned, or to deprive himself of air without
being suffocated, or to drink poison without being destroyed, he
receives for each of these infractions of the 'natural laws' a corporeal
_punishment_, and one that is proportioned to his offence; while, on
the contrary, if he observes and obeys every one of these laws, in their
exact and regular relations to him, he will preserve his existence, and
make it as happy as it can be."

This code of "natural laws" is then described by Volney as possessing no
fewer than _ten_ peculiar characteristics, which give it a decided
preeminence over every other moral system, whether human or Divine,--as
being _primitive, immediate, universal, invariable, evident, reasonable,
just, peaceful, beneficial_, and alone _sufficient_. But it is so only
when viewed in connection with the miserably low and meagre system of
morals with which it is avowedly associated. For when morals are
described as a mere physical science, founded on man's organization, his
interests and passions,--when the treatise, according to its _second_
title, is professedly an attempt to expound the _physical principles of
morals_,--and when, in pursuance of this plan, all the principles of
Ethics are rigorously reduced to _one_, namely, the principle of
self-preservation, which is enforced, as a duty, by the only sanctions
of pleasure and pain,--it is not wonderful that, _for such an end_, the
"natural laws" might be held sufficient: but it is wonderful that any
mind capable of a moment's reflection should not have perceived that, in
such a system, the cardinal idea of _Deity_ is altogether omitted, or
le