50 The Morality of Nature 



use for, labor and devotion; and they are applied in 

 the same way for the same purposes; although civilization 

 may invent and append certain modifications of law, and 

 arrange the exchange of labor, and the transfer of it, and 

 of property, between individuals. All that simply means 

 that in the simpler life a duty must be done, and in the 

 complex its doing may be procured instead, which is clearly 

 an extension again of the conduct unit and not an annul- 

 ment of the principle. And again in the establishment of 

 the obligation to respect property rights by which the 

 swallows enjoy the use of their nests undisturbed by their 

 own kind (though not, be it marked, by all nature) there 

 is evident in rudimentary form the same principle which 

 underlies the property conventions of man. 



Now if human action is so closely related to that action 

 of lower nature, human conduct is presumably governed by 

 laws fundamentally similar, but extended to meet new 

 conditions. Such similarity and extension would still permit 

 of the coexistence of laws entirely apart from those of 

 nature, that is to say of supernatural laws, yet these need 

 not have the efifect of nullifying the natural law common to 

 all creatures; on the contrary the supernatural might be 

 of higher effect and yet still operate in the same direction 

 as the natural. There is no ground for a supposition that 

 supernatural law must be violated by including man under 

 natural law. The inclusion of humanity and nature gener- 

 ally in the same law and under the same administration of 

 it; suffering the same consequences and compensations to 

 attain similar benefits, does not preclude the possibility of 

 the assumption that man also enjoys a distinct and separate 



