88 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



condition, the more nearly we find customs merging in 

 instinctive habits. But the instinctive habit of a gregarious 

 animal is very much akin to what Austin would have 

 termed a natural law. The laws relating to property and 

 marriage in the civilised states of to-day can be traced 

 back with more or less continuity to the instinctive habits 

 of gregarious animals. The historical origin, therefore, of 

 civil law is to be sought in natural law in its older sense. 

 Indeed this fact was recognised by the early Roman 

 jurists, who refer to a lex natum as existing alongside the 

 civil law. This law of nature they considered animals as 

 well as men to have a knowledge of, and they made 

 special reference to it in relation to marriage and the birth 

 of children. Now it is clear that, however flagrant in 

 Austin's opinion the metaphor may be when we speak of 

 the laivs observed by animals, still the use of the word 

 law in this sense is a very old one even among jurists 

 themselves. 



^ 6. — Confusion between the two Senses of Natural Law 



But the Roman lawyers merely took the idea of 

 natural law from the Greek philosophers, and it is to the 

 Stoics especially that we owe a conception of law which 

 is of value as illustrating the kind of obscurity which still 

 attaches to the word natural law in many minds. The 

 Stoics defined nature as the universe of things, and they 

 declared this universe to be guided by reason. But reason, 

 because it is a directive power, forbidding and enjoining, 

 they called law. Now the law of nature they considered 

 to take in some manner its rise in nature itself — there 

 was no source of law to nature outside nature — and they 

 accordingly defined this law of nature as a force inherent 

 in the universe. They further asserted that since reason 

 cannot be twofold, and since man has reason as well as 

 the universe, the reason in man and the universe must be 

 the same, and therefore the law of nature must be the law 

 by which men's actions ought to be guided. 



The string of dogma and unwarranted inference marking 



