THE SCIENTIFIC LAW 87 



for us a lengthy description of the sequences among our 

 sense-impressions. Law in the scientific sense is thus 

 essentially a product of the human mind and has no 

 meaning apart from man. It owes its existence to the 

 creative power of his intellect. There is more meaning 

 in the statement that man gives laws to Nature than in 

 its converse that Nature gives laws to man. 



§ 5- — The Two Senses of the Words " Nattiral Law^^ 



We have now traced at least one point of analogy 

 between juridical and scientific law which I think escaped 

 Austin, namely, both are the product of human intelligence. 

 But we have at the same time seen the wide distinction 

 between the two. The civil law involves a command and 

 a duty ; the scientific law is a description, not a pre- 

 scription. The civil law is valid only for a special 

 community at a special time ; the scientific law is valid 

 for all normal human beings, and is unchangeable so long 

 as their perceptive faculties remain at the same stage of 

 development.^ For Austin, however, and for many other 

 philosophers too, the law of nature was not the mental 

 formula, but the repeated sequence of perceptions. This 

 repeated sequence of perceptions they projected out of 

 themselves, and considered as part of an external world 

 unconditioned by and independent of man. In this sense 

 of the word, a sense unfortunately far too common to-day, 

 natural law could exist before it was recognised by man. 

 In this sense natural law has a much older ancestry than 

 civil law, of which it appears to be the parent. For 

 tracing historically the growth of civil law, we find its 

 origin in unwritten custom. The customs which the 

 struggle for existence have gradually developed in a tribe 

 become in course of time its earliest laws. Now, the 

 farther we go back in the development of man, through 

 more and more complete barbarism to a simply animal 



1 The average perceptive faculty is probably still changing slightly, 

 however insensibly. Nevertheless the perceptive faculty is now among men 

 fairly stable in type, as compared with the rapid change it must have under- 

 gone during man's evolution from a lowly form of life. 



