94 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



identical with natural law — any more than the particular 

 configuration of the planetary system at this moment is 

 identical with the law of gravitation. We are now, I 

 think, in a position to draw a clear distinction between 

 civil (or moral) law and natural law. Civil law takes its 

 origin in natural law in the old sense (p. 88), while its 

 growth and variation can, in broad outline at least, be 

 described in the brief formulae of science, or in natural 

 laws in the scientific sense. Civil and moral laws are the 

 natural product of societies, and of classes within society, 

 struggling in the early days for self-preservation, and in 

 these later days for a maximum of individual and class 

 comfort. 



A civil law, according to Austin, is a rule laid down 

 for the guidance of an intelligent being by an intelligent 

 being having power over him. Such a rule varies with 

 every age and every society. On the other hand, a natural 

 law is not laid down by one intelligent being for another ; 

 it involves no command or corresponding duty, and it is 

 valid for all normal human beings. It has taken centuries 

 for men to arrive at a full appreciation of this distinction, 

 and it would be well could the distinction be now em- 

 phasised by the specialisation of the word law in one or 

 other of its senses. We sadly need separate terms for the 

 routine of sense-impressions, for the brief description or 

 formula of science, and for the canon of social conduct, or, 

 in other words, for the perceptive order, the descriptive 

 order, and the prescriptive order. Historically we cannot 

 say that any of these orders has the higher claim to the 

 title law, for the Roman ideas of law must at least be 

 traced back to their Greek parentage. Here, in the Greek 

 word v6[jbo<i, law, the confusion centres, and at the same 

 time the historical origin of the confusion becomes ap- 

 parent. This word shows us that civil law originated in . 

 custom, and yet Plato derives it from " distribution of 

 mind." ^ Anything from the harmony of nature to the 

 strains of a song was for the Greek law. In the con- 

 ception of order or sequence, therefore, we see the historical 



1 The Laws, iv. 714, and see also iii. 700, and vii. 800. 



