For example, the law that all bodies impinging on lesser bodies, lose as
much of their own motion as they communicate to the latter is a
universal law of all bodies, and depends on natural necessity. So, too,
the law that a man in remembering one thing, straightway remembers
another either like it, or which he had perceived simultaneously with
it, is a law which necessarily follows from the nature of man. But the
law that men must yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat of their
natural right, and that they bind themselves to live in a certain way,
depends on human decree. Now, though I freely admit that all things are
predetermined by universal natural laws to exist and operate in a given,
fixed, and definite manner, I still assert that the laws I have just
mentioned depend on human decree.

(1.) Because man, in so far as he is a part of Nature, constitutes a
part of the power of Nature. Whatever, therefore, follows necessarily
from the necessity of human nature (that is, from Nature herself, in so
far as we conceive of her as acting through man) follows, even though it
be necessarily, from human power. Hence the sanction of such laws may
very well be said to depend on man's decree, for it principally depends
on the power of the human mind; so that the human mind in respect to its
perception of things as true and false, can readily be conceived as
without such laws, but not without necessary law as we have just defined
it.

(2.) I have stated that these laws depend on human decree because it is
well to define and explain things by their proximate causes. The general
consideration of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us very
little in forming and arranging our ideas concerning particular
questions. Let us add that as to the actual cooerdination and
concatenation of things, that is how things are ordained and linked
together, we are obviously ignorant; therefore, it is more profitable
for right living, nay, it is necessary for us to consider things as
contingent. So much about law in the abstract.

Now the word law seems to be only applied to natural phenomena by
analogy, and is commonly taken to signify a command which men can either
obey or neglect, inasmuch as it restrains human nature within certain
originally exceeded limits, and therefore lays down no rule beyond human
strength. Thus it is expedient to define law more particularly as a plan
of life laid down by man for himself or others with a cer