oubt 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