ON THE NOTIONS OF EIGHT AND JUSTICE 295 



the force of that highest precept of Eight, which bids us 

 live virtuously (that is, piously). And in this sense learned 

 men have rightly put it down among things to be desired, 

 that natural law and the law of nations [jus naturae et 

 gentium] should be formulated in accordance with the 

 doctrines of Christianity, that is (according to the teach- 

 ing of Christ) TO, di/wrepa 54 , the sublime things, the divine 

 things of the wise. Thus I think I have very fitly 

 explained the three precepts of Eight or three degrees of 

 justice, and have pointed out the sources of natural law. 



Besides the eternal rights of a rational nature which 

 flow from the Divine Source, there is also observed a 

 voluntary Right, derived from customs or made by a 

 superior. And indeed in the commonwealth civil Eight 

 receives its force from him who has the supreme power 55 ; 



we also diminish, in so far as it depends upon us, the perfection 

 of the great commonwealth, of which God is the Monarch.' 

 Meditation sur la notion commune de la justice (Mollat, p. 76). 



54 Possibly Leibniz is thinking of 17 dvoaOev ao<f>ia (St. James, iii. 

 15, 17). Leibniz seems himself to have intended to supply the 

 want to which he here refers, for he sketched the outline of 

 a book on the subject, which is printed by Mollat (pp. 8 sqq.), under 

 the title Tabulae duae disciplinae juris naturae et gentium secundum 

 disciplinam Christianorum. In this he refers to St. James as ' calling 

 charity voftos paei\iK6s, the royal law (ch. ii. 8), inasmuch as it 

 comes from the supreme King (St. Paul, Romans, i. 32, ducaiajjia rov 

 foot)).' (Mollat, p. n.) 



55 While admitting a right of this kind as distinct from natural 

 right, Leibniz maintains that the two ought always to be in 

 harmony. He thus condemns the view of Hobbes, that the basis 

 of right is power, which he identifies with the view of Thrasymachus 

 in Plato's Republic, bk. i. (see Mollat, p. 57 sqq.). Cf. Le Portrait 

 du Prince (Klopp, iv. 461) : 'As the order of States is established 

 on the authority of those who govern them and on the dependence 

 of their peoples, nature which destines men for civil life endows 

 them at birth with different qualities, some for commanding, 

 others for obeying, in order that the power of the sovereign in 

 a monarchy and the inequality between those who command and 

 those who obey in a republic, be no less founded on nature than 

 on law, on virtue than on fortune. So princes ought to be above 

 their subjects by their virtue and their natural qualities, as they 

 are above them by the authority which the laws give them, in 



