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Natural law   /nˈætʃərəl lɔ/   Listen
Natural law

noun
1.
A rule or body of rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to or binding upon human society.  Synonym: law.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Natural law" Quotes from Famous Books



... his own sake, but her own—Echo knew that, after all, she was a woman. She loved Jack Payson with the unreasoning and unrestrained passion that sways even the highest of her sex. By the balance of natural law she was lowering herself to meet him as he was coming up in the moral scale, and thus preparing for herself and her husband a happy union of a mutual understanding of weaknesses held in common. Were Echo to remain always ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... bitter, cruel game of death, as it is played throughout the wild. With man the inexorable law is, "Get on or get out." In the wild they phrase it another way: "Kill or be killed." Man puts it more politely, perhaps, but it's all the same old natural law, I guess. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... philosophy. If a material body fall from a height its velocity is accelerated, by a well-known law, in a constantly increasing ratio: so in issues of irredeemable currency, in obedience to the theories of a legislative body or of the people at large, there is a natural law of rapidly increasing emission and depreciation. The first inflation bills were passed with great difficulty, after very sturdy resistance and by a majority of a few score out of nearly a thousand votes; but we observe now that new inflation measures were passed ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... accumulation of hidden forces of the strictly natural order ready to burst forth when the fit opportunity came. In the great conversions which have sometimes seemed by their suddenness and completeness to defy all possibility of reduction to natural law, there are often nevertheless tokens of deep dissatisfaction with the previous life having swelled up slowly within the soul for some time, even for some long time beforehand. The inclination to go on in evil courses has been broken down at last, not merely by the action of the will, ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... a priori science, the protest of Bacon; and in discussing education, many of the ideas of to-day. And it would be difficult to cite, in humanist literature before our own century, a more comprehensive expression of the idea of natural law than this ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a spirit,—responsible because he is free, and free because ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... years ago, not inaccurately, the character of this alliance. I allude to Puffendorf. "It seems useless," says he, "to frame any pacts or leagues, barely for the defence and support of universal peace; for by such a league nothing is superadded to the obligation of natural law, and no agreement is made for the performance of any thing which the parties were not previously bound to perform; nor is the original obligation rendered firmer or stronger by such an addition. Men of any tolerable culture and civilization ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is another. Along with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has a different, and probably still older, conception in which we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old. If we are of the modern type of mind, that sees in natural law a majesty and grandeur far more impressive than any solitary infraction of it could possibly be, let us not forget that, after all, science has not explained everything. We have still to face the ultimate miracle,—the origin and principle of life! Here is the ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... worried over what was past. They saw their own romance tenderly reflected. Mrs. Bennington was utterly oblivious. Mothers never realize that their daughters and sons must some day leave them; they refuse to accept this natural law; they lament over it to-day as they lamented in the days of the Old Testament. The truth is, children are always children to the parents; paternal and maternal authority believes ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... we are still so undeveloped that it would be, for many reasons, unsafe to let us know how great a future is before us. Strongest in hope is the argument of Charles Fourier, based on what he declared to be a natural law. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... evil propensities certain elements and fluids, usually quiescent or harmless, with awful shape and terrific force—just as the lightning that had lain hidden and innocent in the cloud becomes by natural law suddenly visible, takes a distinct shape to the eye, and can strike destruction on the object to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... point—it is the exterior and accessory aspect of the question. He won't escape—not only because he won't know where to go to, but especially, and above all, because he is mine from the psychological point of view. What do you think of this explanation? In virtue of a natural law, he will not escape, even if he could do so! Have you ever seen a butterfly close to the candle? My man will hover incessantly round me in the same way as the butterfly gyrates round the candle-light. Liberty will have no longer charms for him; he will grow more and more restless, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... of the universe and that the planets revolved around it. Anaxagoras followed a few years later than Pythagoras, and became convinced that the sun was merely a ball of fire and therefore should not be worshiped; that it follows a natural law, that nothing ever happens by chance, and that to pray for rain ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... these laws do appear to be inexorable. I have never heard of any one professing, during the present generation, to describe a natural phenomenon, with the avowed belief that it was not a product of natural law; yet we constantly hear the scientific view criticised on the ground that events MAY occur without being subject to natural law. The word "may," in this connection, is one to which we can attach no meaning expressive ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... moderate rate is far below the popular mark; but, in considering this important question, it should not be forgotten, that, unlike the paddle, the screw will always cooeperate with sail,—and that, if a ship would go far under steam, she must be content to go gently. The natural law regulating the speed of a ship is, that the power requisite to propel her varies as the cube ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... dramatic profession is recruited. In this way the several types of dramatic artist—each type being distinct and each being expressive of a sequence from mental and spiritual ancestry—are maintained. It is not too much to say that a natural law operates silently and surely behind each seemingly capricious chance, in this field of the conduct of life. A thoroughly adequate dramatic stock-company may almost be said to be a thing of natural accretion. It is made up, like every ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... and matter about us; with our own origin in the low fishlike or apelike creature in the maternal womb; with the development of every plant, tree, and animal from a microscopic germ; with the unbroken sequence of natural law; with the waste, the delays, the pains, the failures on every hand; with the impersonal and the impartial character of all the physical forces; with the transformations and metamorphoses that marked ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... interference from the disturbing original. He was, it is said, meditating an ambitious work, the history of the Roman Polity from Numa to Justinian, an epic in five and twenty books, wherein Selvaggia would have played a fine part, that of the Genius of Natural Law. The scheme might have ripened but for one small circumstance; this was the death ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... begins with the study of the stars and the stones, of masses and of atoms. At a higher level, it turns then to the living organism, studies plants and animals and even brings the human organism entirely under the point of view of natural law. When science has thus mastered the whole physical universe, it finally brings even the mental life of man under the naturalistic point of view, treats his inner experiences like any outer objects, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... promoted such investigations by furnishing new instruments of research. Now in some respects there is an analogy between geology and history. The new geologist aims to describe the inorganic earth dynamically in terms of natural law, using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and even botany and zoology so far as they relate to paleontology. But he does not insist that the relative importance of physical or chemical factors shall ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... deliverer. Hence on the words in Gal. 3:19, "Being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator," a gloss says: "With great wisdom was it so ordered that the Son of Man should not be sent immediately after man's fall. For first of all God left man under the natural law, with the freedom of his will, in order that he might know his natural strength; and when he failed in it, he received the law; whereupon, by the fault, not of the law, but of his nature, the disease gained ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... always implied even in the character of a saint. It seems that the failure of an inheritance, which he had every reason to expect, was the cause of his first disadvantage in the world; and since then, in consonance with that curious natural law which seems so contrary to justice, yet constantly consonant with fact, this evil has been cumulative, and he has had nothing but disappointments ever since. He has a very small living now, and is never likely to get a better, for he is getting ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... girl ought to walk locked close, arm in arm, between two guardian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought of all that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants.—Tell me, are there not natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natural law that nothing short of a miracle can ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... it is to go back in imagination to the days before men grasped the meaning of natural law! We take gravitation for granted but, when Newton first proclaimed its law, the artillery of orthodox pulpits was leveled against him in angry consternation. Said one preacher, Newton "took from God that direct action on his ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... the majesty and personal dignity of a forest tree which has had air enough to breathe, and room for its widening roots, and inner vitality with which to accomplish its unceasing task. It obeys the perfect natural law of growth, and the peculiar awe it ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... command. But the weak have given thanks to God, who has moved the heart of our most Christian king to order that a remedy be applied to so many and so great disorders and excesses, which up to the present time have been so contrary to natural law, and proved so great an impediment to religion and evangelical preaching, and so harmful and prejudicial to the inhabitants of these islands. Indeed, if we should hear, as God does, the complaints and outcries which continually arise in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... sovereignty of the United States; that it made them instrumental to the annoyance of those nations, and thereby tended to commit their peace.' And this opinion is still conceived to be not contrary to the principles of natural law, the usage of nations, the engagements which unite the two people, nor the proclamation of the President, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... not the use of reason, he differs not from an irrational animal; so that even as an ox or a horse belongs to someone who, according to the civil law, can use them when he likes, as his own instrument, so, according to the natural law, a son, before coming to the use of reason, is under his father's care. Hence it would be contrary to natural justice, if a child, before coming to the use of reason, were to be taken away from its parents' ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... when he was in college a simple little home-made aeroplane furnished amusement for twenty fellows, and that they never dreamed of dropping over to the coast on Saturdays for a dip in the surf in their private monoplanes. Oh, well, it's human nature and natural law, I suppose. No use trying to put a rock on the wheels of progress—and there's no use trying to ride the darned thing either. It'll throw you ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... shall teach the gorilla proper respect for the superior animals before we have done with him. His desire to supplant me in the scheme of evolution is contrary to science, my boy, and a defiance of natural law, and must not be countenanced for ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... a brief account of the Lincoln family simply as a matter of interest, and not as a means of proving or explaining any natural law. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... vague pantheism, but all his views of the power that lies behind life are obscured and perturbed by sceptical despondency. He is the great man of science, who, like other men of genius too deeply immersed in the study of natural law or abstract reasoning, has lost all touch with that great world of spiritual things which we speak of as religion, and which we can only come in contact with through those instinctive emotions which scientific analysis very often does so much to stifle. There are many men of science who, like Darwin, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... more professional he seemed master. Locke, Stewart, with whose liberality and tolerance and hopeful and rational philanthropy he sympathized warmly, Butler, Edwards, and the writers on natural law and moral philosophy, he expounded with the ease and freedom of one habitually trained and wholly equal to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... am perhaps the worst skater in the world, and therefore, according to a natural law, I covet the faintest distinction on the ice more than immortal fame for the things in which nature has given me aptitude to excel. I envy that large friend of yours—Jane is her name, I think—more than I envy Plato. I came down here this morning, thinking that the skating world was all a-bed, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... from the true knowledge and love of right, acts with freedom and constancy, whereas he who acts from fear of evil, is under the constraint of evil, and acts in bondage under external control. So that this commandment of God to Adam comprehends the whole Divine natural law, and absolutely agrees with the dictates of the light of nature; nay, it would be easy to explain on this basis the whole history or allegory of the first man. But I prefer to pass over the subject in silence, because, in the first place, I cannot be absolutely certain ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... Carleton concluded that the crossing of the Red Sea by the fugitive slaves from Egypt, over an "underground railway made by the order of God himself," "instead of being in the domain of the miraculous, is under natural law." At Suez, one of the half-way houses of the world, he was amused at the jollity of the Mohammedans, who had just broken their long lenten fast from tobacco and smoke, and who were very happy in ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... "Creation" and accept evolution; if you discard "revelation" and accept evolution; if you discard miracles and accept natural law, there is nothing left of the Christian Religion but the life ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... beginnings; and ye shall know that I am the Lord" (Ezek. xxxvi. 11). Again: "I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye receive no more reproach of famine, among the heathen." I submit and believe that all this God will do by what men are pleased to call natural law. The Divine will not rudely break in upon ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... easy to steer clear of the shore, which you see is some distance off yet. But now that I have given you this little excitement, which you will not regret after it is all over, I will stop the current which produces this great force and bring in an artificial law, as it were, to override the natural law now in operation. Just look at this lever and see how easily it ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... same girl is married and by due operation of natural law becomes a widow, she doubtless has come to a better understanding of the pedestal idea. Hence she does not attempt the impossible, and satisfies herself with working those miracles which ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... the adversaries select the Law, because human reason naturally understands, in some way, the Law (for it has the same judgment divinely written in the mind); [the natural law agrees with the law of Moses, or the Ten Commandments] and by the Law they seek the remission of sins and justification. Now, the Decalog requires not only outward civil works, which reason can in some way produce, but it also requires other things ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... and worshipping, more or less ambitious, not always just, patriotically devoted fatalist and enthusiast, a mysterious and commanding genius of an iron sort. When he was angered it was as though the offender had managed to antagonize some natural law, or force or mass. Such an one had to face, not an irritated human organism, but a Gibraltar armed for the encounter. The men who found themselves confronted by this anger could and did brace themselves against it, but it was with some hopelessness ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... veins and horns on its head will fight when it is attacked. How much more so will man, who carries in his breast the faculties of love and hatred, joy and anger! When he is pleased, a feeling of affection springs up within him; when angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his being.... What then shall be said of those scholars of our time, blind to all great issues, and without any appreciation of relative values, who can only bark out their stale formulas about "virtue" and "civilization," condemning the use of military weapons? ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... by these natives in their paganism, are observed by them since they have become Christians, in so far as they are not contrary to natural law, especially as to their slavery, successions, inheritances, adoptions, wills, and lawful trading. In their suits, they always allege and prove the custom, and are judged by it, according to royal decrees to that effect. In other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... her own life if she is conferring life upon others, but to indulge in such a waste of vital force merely for pleasure is certainly never excusable, and least excusable of all is the arousing of pleasurable emotions by a direct violation of natural law. ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... woman he will some day marry are apt to be meretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially, is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, or romance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty, ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustrious beauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any one but themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisite culture. But chance knows ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... should be nothing more than the true, fitting, and natural law of man. Man considered solely as a spiritual machine? No. Considered as an animal that eats and drinks? Not that either. Man considered as a complete ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... industry, was merely negative action by the government, the repeal of the old laws, the overthrow of old abuses. The French Revolution, following a few years later, emphasized this thought in the political field. The philosophers of the time believed in a "natural law" in industry and politics. The reformers of the time wished to throw off the trammels of the past and to give men opportunity to exert themselves "naturally." In America the old abuses never had taken deep root, as the conditions of a new continent were not favorable to monopoly ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... you are to take yourself, and how much to leave to others. A large quantity, remember, unless you destroy it, must always be so left at one time or another; the only questions you have to decide are, not what you will give, but when, and how, and to whom, you will give. The natural law of human life is, of course, that in youth a man shall labour and lay by store for his old age, and when age comes, shall use what he has laid by, gradually slackening his toil, and allowing himself more frank use of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... a favorite method with the advocates of special revelations to show their agreement with the operations of natural law, till a difficulty is met with that cannot be answered, when they flee at once to miracle to save them. But, in this case, miracle itself cannot ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... Under the natural law of increase the population of the republic should have been numbered in millions; but close examination, in all parts of its territory, showed us that there were not two hundred thousand inhabitants left, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... homes, on the street corners and public halls. Some of the stories are legends and traditions that grew up with the beginnings of the Christian era. All of them are taken from authentic sources and many of them illustrate some natural law. ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant

... holding to this theory of duality brings us, we feel that there is a natural law underneath it all, and like all laws of nature, a liberal interpretation is the one nearest the truth. What part of these supplements are opposites? What part of substance is manner? What part of this duality is polarity? These questions ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... and spinning of the thread of destiny, and such-like coincidence and chance; and this is from one of the same stock, and a kinsman and partner, one who knows not, however, what is according to his nature. But I know; for this reason I behave towards him according to the natural law of fellowship with benevolence and justice. At the same time, however, in things indifferent I attempt to ascertain the value ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... there shone through the thin veil of matter a personal Life which brought another kind of world than this world of natural law and utilitarian aims full into light. There broke through here in the face of Jesus {xlii} Christ a revelation of Purpose in the universe so far beyond the vague trend of purpose dimly felt in slowly ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... pre-eminently himself. The systematic resolution of the whole theory of society into the elementary principle of natural law, was peculiar to him. Justice was the cardinal principle which must lie at the foundation of all good government. The word sophia—wisdom—included all excellency in personal morals, whether as manifested (reflectively) ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Selingman declared hastily, "not to be reckoned with yet as a nation. What is born amongst the older peoples must find its way there by natural law. It is not a country for commencements. England—it is England where the harvest is ripe. What are ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... whatsoever. Snt George is, of course, myself. But here my very aptitude in controversy tripped me up as playwright. Owing to my nack of going straight to the root of the matter in hand and substituting, before you can say Jack Robinson, a truth for every fallacy and a natural law for every convention, the scene of Snt George (Bernard Shaw)'s victory over the Turkish Knight came out too short for theatrical purposes. I calculated that the play as it stood would not occupy more than five hours in performance. I therefore departed from the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... would never turn her back upon them, would always share with them. She would have despised her had she thought her capable of another course; yet it baffled her to understand why, when parents were so trashy, this natural law should not be suspended. Such a question brought her back, however, to her perpetual enigma, the mystery she had already turned over in her mind for hours together—the wonder of such people being Verena's progenitors at all. She had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... the company had had an exciting and fatiguing day, the young people began immediately after supper, as if according to a natural law, to arrange ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... doctrines of natural law was formerly overestimated, as it was not known to how considerable an extent the way had been prepared for them by the mediaeval philosophy of the state and of law. It is evident from the equally rich and careful investigations of Otto Gierke[1] that in the political and legal ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... the great comet of 1680 obeyed Kepler's laws in its flight about the sun; and an even harder one when the same visitant came back in 1758, obedient to Halley's prediction, after its three-quarters of a century of voyaging but in the abyss of space. Proved thus to bow to natural law, the celestial messenger could no longer fully, sustain its role. But long-standing notoriety cannot be lived down in a day, and the comet, though proved a "natural" object, was still regarded as a very ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... pay no heed to their instructors? What health would there be for the sick, if those indisposed should not obey their physicians in all points, or what safety for the navigators if the sailors should turn a deaf ear to their pilots? It is by a natural law both necessary and salutary that the principle of ruling and again that of being ruled have been placed among men, and without them it is impossible for anything to continue to exist for ever so short a time. Now it belongs to him who is stationed over another both ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... this is the organizing of knowledge. The final process involves a summary of the facts and their relations by some simple expression or formula. A good illustration of a scientific principle is the natural law of gravitation. It states simply that two bodies of matter attract one another directly in proportion to their mass, and inversely in proportion to the square of the distance between them. In this concise rule are described the relations which have been actually determined ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... it interested him to see that intense expression of American civilisation, the horse-car, triumphing along the magnificent avenues that mark the line of the old city walls; and he recognised an instinctive obedience to an abtruse natural law in the fact that whereas the omnibus, which the Italians have derived from the English, was not filled beyond its seating capacity, the horse-car was overcrowded without and within at Florence, just as it is with ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... felt, with a singular mixture of satisfaction and disapproval, by the majority of the white chapel's congregation, that Larry's parents had, socially, been ill-advised when they "made a Roman of him." In the creed of Mary Twomey, and her fellows, it was only in conformity with natural law in the spiritual world that ginthry should go to church, and the like of herself to chapel. She, no more than Frederica, could subdue the feeling of incongruity imparted by the fact of Master Larry and herself worshipping together; it was ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... to motherhood alone. Every organ and faculty is fully employed and perfected. Through the development of the individual mother, better and higher types of animals are produced and carried forward. In a word, natural law makes the female the expression and the conveyor of ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... are constantly coming to realize how little we really know, and are also continually finding manifestations of forces that at first seem like exceptions to established laws. This is, of course, brought about by the modifying influence of some other natural law, though many of these we have not ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... But it was hard to reckon with such a restless element as the clans, and hanging and heading were very ineffectual measures among people with whom "another for Hector" was the simplest suggestion of natural law. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... side of natural law, which is hostile to theories of equality, are the conditions of modern progress. Science and industry demand more and more considerable intellectual efforts, so that mental inequalities and the differences of social condition which spring from ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... admit that any and every scientific law of our present epoch may be negatived in some future epoch. It is always possible, also, that a seeming law of to-day may be proved false to-morrow, which is another way of saying that man's classification improves from generation to generation. For a "natural law," let it be repeated, is not nature's method, but man's interpretation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... no distinctive character, if it is capriciously useful or injurious, and is governed by no natural law, if it finds no spur in its usefulness, no check in its inutility, if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who exercise it; in a word, if it has no absolute principles,—oh! then it is necessary to deliberate, weigh, and regulate transactions, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... respond automatically to the needs of humanity, or, at least, to the "effective demand," which the classicist mistook for the same thing. Just as much wheat or bricks or diamonds would be produced as the world called for; to produce too much of any one thing was to violate a natural law; the falling price and the resulting temporary loss sternly rebuked ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... as she had never been in all her starved life. Had she not promised never to forget, and was there not a deeper promise in her wistful eyes that the years could not wipe out? She was his by every right of natural law. By God! he would not sell his freedom of choice to ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... with natural law, children would have no sexual notions or feelings before the occurrence of puberty. No prurient speculation about sexual matters would enter their heads. Until that period, the reproductive system should lie dormant in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... instruction, and a little music? The cheap excursions, the school feasts, the concerts given for the people, the increased brightness of religious services, the Bank holidays, the Saturday half-holiday, all point to the gradual recognition of the great natural law that men and women, as well as boys and girls, must have play. At the present moment we have just arrived at the stage of acknowledging this law; the next step will be that of respecting it, and preparing to obey it, just now we are willing and anxious that all should play; ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... travel much through the country, that you will often find yourself involuntarily looking for texts or other chisellings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will begin, perhaps, to assume for you a certain individual or physiognomical aspect—to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the Japanese. Indeed, Japan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as high volcanic lands ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... great doctrines of Morphology, of Development, of Distribution, and the like. He sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other natural law; and therefore, with this mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as far as organic matters have hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shown themselves capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as proof that order and law reign there ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... that unless you change your way of life in time you are heading straight for tragedy. We both know a lot of women who try to defy the natural law. Many of them are rather beautiful women. But do you think they are happy women? I don't. I know they aren't. Youth laughs at them. I don't know what you feel about it, but I think I would rather be pelted with ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... there are tenderer touches yet upon this canvas. Broken hearts will be healed up, prison doors unhung, broken family circles complete again. It is to be a time of great rejoicing by the common people. Yet all this will be brought about, not immediately, but gradually, following the natural law of growth; though the beginning will be marked by a great ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... views of life, bounded by the senses and logic, creates gods for himself, or when he gets to the point of seeing that he has made them, he disclaims them. The Mystic knows that he creates gods, he knows why he creates them, he sees, so to say, behind the natural law which makes man create them. It is as though a plant suddenly became conscious, and learned the laws of its growth and development. As it is, it develops in lovely unconsciousness. If it knew about the laws of its own being, ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... of making other people afraid of you must have an end, the policy of making others respect and like you can have no end. There is no question which is the natural law of national development. Neither for the individual nor for a nation is it wholesome to increase antagonisms and to lessen the conciliatory points of contact ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... scientific scholars of the nineteenth century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. Since the day of Copernicus (p. 386) and Newton (p. 388) a growing appreciation of the permanence and scope of natural law in the universe had been slowly developing, and this the scholars of the nineteenth century fixed as a principle and applied in many new directions. A few of the more important of these new directions may profitably ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... forms of injustice or wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad passions being brought in to play, and in these cases I confess my inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural law of conscience which we are told (I) is written ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the force of their universality, must be brought to bear upon it, through all its developments. The universal historical laws, in that modification of them which the speciality of the human kind creates, must be impartially set forth here. The law of DUTY, as the NATURAL LAW of human society; the law of humanity, as the law, nay, THE FORM, of the HUMAN kind, stamped on it with the Creator's stamp, that order from the universal law of kinds that gives to all life its ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... law; these having not the law are a law to themselves: who shew the work of the law written in their hearts." By "gentiles" the Apostle evidently means genuine heathens, not converts from paganism to Christianity, and hence the meaning of the passage is that the heathens who know the natural law embodied in the Decalogue only as a postulate of reason, are by nature(147) able to "do those things that are of the law,"(148) i.e. observe at least some of its precepts. That St. Paul did not think the gentiles ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... proved too strong for even Sir William Crookes and his instruments. In Sir William's presence, in fact, there was a multiplication of mysteries. The instruments registered results which seemed inexplicable by any natural law; a lath, cast carelessly on a table, rose in the air, nodded gravely to the astonished scientist, and proceeded to tap out messages alleged to come from the world beyond; chairs moved in ghostly fashion up and down the room; invisible beings ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... duty and humanity in the premises was not thus easily disposed of, considering, as I was bound to do, the equal innocence of the chicks, both of which had been placed in the nest in obedience to a natural law, which in the case of the cow-bird was none the less a divine institution because I failed to understand it. Such is the inevitable, somewhat penitent conclusion which I always arrive at on the cow-bird question; and yet my next cow-bird fledgling will doubtless ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings," he said. "Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... from slipping over the cliff by a knowledge which will bring courage to combat the destructive tendencies. Is not one of the distinctive features of our age a forcible overcoming of the natural trend of things? If a river is by natural law wearing away its bank in a place we wish to keep, do we sit down and moan and say it is sad, but we cannot help it? No, that attitude belonged to the Middle Ages. We say, Hold fast, we cannot have that; and we cement the sides and confine ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... be matched by other coincidences as remarkable and as little the result of the operation of any natural law. For instance, the following strange relation, introducing the dimensions of the sun himself, nowhere, so far as I have yet seen, introduced among pyramid relations, even by pyramidalists: 'If the plane of the ecliptic ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... to be unlucky; it really appeared as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the wily inhabitants of a new watering-place have only to sit down and await events. The first people to appear on the scene are, naturally, the English, some hidden natural law compelling that race to wander forever in inexpensive by-ways and serve as pioneers for other nations. No matter how new or inaccessible the spring, you are sure to find a small colony of Britons installed in the half-finished hotels, reading week-old editions of the Times, and grumbling ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... accessible to the French public.(11) We believe in it in its philosophical sense, and not simply in the juridical sense attached to it by Ulpian. "Let us not," observes Portalis, "confound the physical order of nature, common to all animated beings, with the natural law which is peculiar to man. We call natural law, the principles which govern man considered as a moral being, that is, as an intelligent and free being, intended to live in the society of other beings, intelligent and free like himself."(12) Ulpian's famous tripartite ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... and similarly with my visit to Lanercost Abbey; and the reader must remember, that such phenomena are by no means uncommon—they are the natural action of some part of our personality, and must therefore follow some natural law, even though we may at present know very little of how ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... the close of April Denasia fell ill. The poor girl fretted at the decline of enthusiasm in her audience. She made stupendous efforts to regain her place in the popular favour, and she failed because of the natural law which few are strong enough to defy—that change is as necessary to amusement as fidelity is to duty. Denasia did not indeed reason about the event; the simple fact that she had no recalls and no clamorous approval made her miserable, ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... say exactly, little girl. People living in what we call a state of nature, like African savages, or as our American Indians once did, seem to follow Heart of Nature's law; 'Kill only what ye need for food.' But many people that are called civilized never think of natural law at all, and having a coarse streak in their natures desire to kill wild things merely for the sake of killing. It is against such people that laws must be made by ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... in the fire. The cook has eight moulds in working order at once. When the eighth is filled from the pail of batter at his side, the first is done; and so on, ceaselessly, all day and half the night, like a natural law. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... the possibilities of computer-searching have emerged, scholars in the field of late ancient and early medieval studies (philosophers, theologians, classicists, and those studying the history of natural law and the history of the legal development of Western civilization) have been longing for a fully searchable version of Western literature, for example, all the texts of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux and Boethius, not to mention all the secondary ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... by it themselves. I too am quite ready to admit that these phenomena are caused by God, but I take the same view about all phenomena and hold that no single phenomenon is more or less divine in origin than any other. All are uniform and all may be divine, but each phenomenon obeys a law, and natural law ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... pass through all these sieves. They are to be "the jury." All the men who deny the constitutionality of the wicked statute; all who have such reverence for the unalienable Rights of man and for the Natural Law of God that they would not prevent a Christian from aiding his brother to escape from bondage; all who have such respect for their own manhood that they will not swear to take a judge's word for law before they hear it—are ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... declaration that the gospel was for the poor. The very miracles that Christ performed were not philosophical enigmas, as we look at them. They were all of them miracles of mercy. They were miracles to those who were suffering helplessly where natural law and artificial means could not reach them. In every case the miracles of Christ were mercies, though we look at them in a spirit totally different from that in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the necessities of life in the world. From this false law he argued that, as population increases too rapidly, the newcomers cannot hope to find a sufficiency of good things; that the poverty of the masses is not due to conditions created by man, but to a natural law; and that consequently this law cannot be altered by any change in political institutions. This new doctrine was eagerly adopted by the rich, who were thus enabled to argue that Nature intended that the masses should find no room at her feast; and that therefore our system of industrial ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... advocates and apologists of Anarchy, or of Laissez-faire must not mistake their position, they are inevitably the allies of the oppressor. The integration of special classes, sects, and interests, is the natural law making "toleration" more and more impossible. The integral integration, then, of all for the equal support, and for the equal protection of all, in mutual harmony and progress, is the only condition of our liberty, peace, and safety. No rule ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... hazards. I need not add that it still seems so. Yet it was a life's work, already well along, and there was no need for me to pay an excessive price for mere speed. I elected to let everything go but intellect; I felt that I must do so; and in consequence, by the simplest sort of natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up—had shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my intellect was not the biggest part of me. I have always understood that.... Still, it seems that I required you to rediscover it for me in terms ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... remain the same," said Stephen. "We have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome. That natural law surmounts every other; we can't help ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... those more ancient efforts of unenlightened reason. What modern system of Skepticism can rival that of Sextus Empiricus? What code of Pantheism, French or German, can be said to equal the mystic dreams of the Vedanta School? What godless theory of Natural Law can compete with the Epicurean philosophy, as illustrated in the poetry of Lucretius? The errors of these ancient systems have been revived even amidst the light of the nineteenth century, and prevail to an extent that may seem to justify the apprehension, frequently ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... wickedness of the men who form them. It is as foolish to decry the wickedness of trust makers as it is to curse the schemes of labor monopolists. Each is working unconsciously in obedience to a natural law; and the only reason that almost every man is not engaged in forming or maintaining a similar monopoly is that he is not placed in similar circumstances. Away, then, with the pessimism which declares that the prevalence ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... commensurate response. The ignorance of our asking and the imperfection of our striving will modify the nature of the response, but they cannot be negative of results. We can trust nature and there is a spiritual law in the natural world as well as a natural law in the spiritual world, for they ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... the father of the parish, the shepherd of the flock—it was a part of the great system. To go a step farther, in political affairs the one leading idea still threaded itself through all. The proper parliamentary representative—the natural law-giver—was the landlord of the district. He was born amongst them, walked about amongst them, had been in their houses many a time. He knew their wants, their ideas, their views. His own interest was identical with theirs. Therefore he was the man. The logic is indisputable. What ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies



Words linked to "Natural law" :   conception, sound law, divine law, construct, law, concept, principle



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