PrintPDF

“Of the Natural Way of Finding out Laws by Reason to Guide the Will to That Which Is Good”

Chapter 8 of Book 1 in

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

By Richard Hooker

1594

[Hooker, Richard. “Concerning Laws and Their Several Kinds in General.” Book 1 in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. In Richard Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker with an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton. Arranged by the Rev. John Keble MA. 7th edition revised by the Very Rev. R.W. Church and the Rev. F. Paget (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888). 3 vols. Vol. 1. The Online Library of Liberty. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/921. In the public domain. Some modernized vocabulary and contructions have been substituted in the text by the Witherspoon Institute.]

Within the text, numbers within brackets indicate the page divisions of the 1888 edition from which this text was taken; prose within text are insertions of the Witherspoon Institute to supply words required by modern English usage. In places the Witherspoon Institute has modernized archaic or obsolete vocabulary or constructions in Hooker’s text. In cases where the changes are very basic and risk no alteration to the original meaning of the text (such as changing “whereof” to “of which”  and “saith” to “says”) there is no notation in the text; changes to more substantive vocabulary are noted with footnotes that show the original word that Hooker used.

Within the footnotes, text not within brackets are Hooker’s original notes; text within single brackets is supplied by the Witherspoon Institute; text within double brackets (that is, [[ ]] ) is supplied by the editors of the 1888 edition. 

Chapter 8: Of the natural way of finding out Laws by Reason to guide the Will to that which is good. 

[1.] Wherefore to return to our former intent of discovering the natural way, by which rules have been found out concerning that goodness by which the Will of man ought to be moved in human actions; as everything naturally and necessarily does desire the utmost good and greatest perfection of which Nature has made it capable, even so [does] man. Our felicity therefore being the object and accomplishment of our desire, we cannot choose but wish and covet it. All particular things which are subject to action, the Will does so far forth incline to, as Reason judges them the better for us, and consequently the more helpful for[1] our bliss. If Reason [should] err, we fall into evil, and are so far forth deprived of the general perfection we seek. Seeing therefore that for the framing of men’s actions the knowledge of good from evil is necessary, it only remains that we search how this may be had. Neither must we suppose that one needs one rule to know the good and another the evil by. For he that knows what is straight does precisely[2] thereby discern what is crooked, because the absence of straightness in bodies capable thereof is crookedness.[3] Goodness in actions is like [] straightness; wherefore that which is done well we term right. For as the straight way is most acceptable to him that travels, because by it he comes soonest to his journey’s end; so in action, that which does lie the most directly[4] between us and the end we desire must necessarily be the fittest for our use. Besides which fitness for use, there is also in rectitude, beauty; as contrariwise in obliquity, deformity. And that which is good in the actions of men, does not only delight as profitable, but as amiable also. In which consideration the Greeks most divinely have given to the active perfection of [226] men a name expressing both beauty and goodness (kalokagathia), because goodness in ordinary speech is for the most part applied only to that which is beneficial. But we in the name of goodness do here imply both.

[2.] And of discerning goodness there are but these two ways[:] the one the knowledge of the causes by which goodness is made good[5]; the other the observation of those signs and tokens, which being annexed always to goodness, argue that where they are found, there also goodness is, although we know not the cause by force of which it is there. The former of these is the most sure and infallible way, but so hard that all shun it, and would rather walk as men do in the dark by haphazard, than tread such long and intricate mazes for knowledge’[s] sake. As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave [aside] such methods of curing as [they] themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by their patients’ impatience are obliged[6] to try the best they can, in taking that way of cure which the cured will yield to; in like sort, considering how the case does stand with this present age full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we yield to the stream thereof; into the causes of goodness we will not make any careful[7] or deep inquiry; to touch them now and then it shall be sufficient, when they are so near at hand that easily they may be conceived without any far-removed discourse: that way we are contented to prove, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked.

[3.] Signs and tokens to know good by are of sundry kinds; some more certain and some less. The most certain token of evident goodness is, if the general persuasion of all men do so account it. And therefore a common received error is never utterly overthrown, till such time as we go from signs to causes, and show some manifest root or source of the error[8] common to all [men], by which it may clearly appear how it has come to pass that so many have been mistaken[9]. In which case surmises and slight probabilities will not serve, because the universal consent of men is the most perfect and strongest in this kind [of sign], which [kind] comprehends [227] only the signs and tokens of goodness. Chance things[10] do vary, and that which a man does but chance to think well of cannot afterward[11] have the like probability[12]. Wherefore although we know not the cause, yet thus much we may know[:] that some necessary cause there is, whenever the judgments of all men generally or for the most part run one and the same way, especially in matters of natural discourse. For of things necessarily and naturally done there is no more affirmed but this, “They keep either always or for the most part one manner[13].”[14] The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself.[15] For that which all men have at all times learned, Nature herself must necessarily have taught;[16] and God being the author of Nature, her voice is but his instrument. By her from Him we receive whatever we learn in this way.[17] Infinite duties there are, the goodness of which is by this rule sufficiently manifested, [even if] we had no other warrant besides to approve them. The Apostle St. Paul [when speaking] concerning the heathen says of them, “They are a law unto themselves” (Rom. 2:14). His meaning is, that by force of the light of Reason, with which God illuminates every one which comes into the world, men are enabled to know truth from falsehood, [228] and good from evil, [and] do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is; which will [he] himself does not reveal by any extraordinary means to them, but they by natural discourse attain the knowledge thereof, [and] seem the makers of those Laws which indeed are his, and they [are] but only the finders of them out.

[4.] A law therefore generally taken, is a directive rule to goodness of operation. The rule of outward divine operations, is the definitive appointment of God’s own wisdom set down within himself. The rule of natural agents that work by simple necessity, is the determination of the wisdom of God, known to God himself the principal director of them, but not to them that are directed to execute the same. The rule of natural agents which work after a sort of their own accord, as the beasts do, is the judgment of [the][18] common sense or phantasy[19] concerning the sensible goodness of those objects wherewith they are moved. The rule of spiritual[20] or immaterial natures, as spirits and angels, is their intuitive intellectual judgment concerning the amiable beauty and high goodness of that object, which with unspeakable joy and delight does set them on work. The rule of voluntary agents on earth is the sentence that Reason gives concerning the goodness of those things which they are to do. And the sentences which Reason gives are some more some less general, before it come to define in particular actions what is good.

[5.] The main principles of Reason are in themselves apparent. For to make nothing evident of itself to man’s understanding would be to take away all possibility of knowing anything. And herein that of Theophrastus is true, “They that seek a reason of all things do utterly overthrow Reason.”[21] In every kind of knowledge some such grounds there are, as that being proposed the mind does presently embrace them as free from all possibility of error, clear and manifest without proof. In which kind more general axioms or principles are such as this, “that the greater good is to be chosen before the less.” If therefore it should be demanded what reason there is, why the Will of Man, which does necessarily shun harm and covet whatever [229] is pleasant and sweet, should be commanded to count the pleasures of sin gall, and notwithstanding the bitter accidents with which virtuous actions are compassed, yet still to rejoice and delight in them: surely this could never stand with Reason, unless wisdom that thus prescribes grounds her laws upon an infallible rule of comparison; which is, “That small difficulties, when exceedingly great good is sure to ensue, and on the other side momentary benefits, when the hurt which they draw after them is unspeakable, are not at all to be respected.” This rule is the ground upon which the wisdom of the Apostle builds a law, enjoining patience to himself; “The present lightness of our affliction works for us even with abundance upon abundance an eternal weight of glory; while we look not on the things which are seen, but on the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17): therefore Christianity [is] to be embraced, whatever calamities in those times it was accompanied with. Upon the same ground our Saviour proves the law most reasonable, that does forbid those crimes which men for gain’s sake fall into. “For a man to win the world if it be with the loss of his soul, what benefit or good is it?” (Matt. 16:26). Axioms less general, yet so manifest that they need no further proof, are such as these, “God [is] to be worshipped;” “parents [are] to be honoured;” “others [are] to be used by us as we ourselves would by them.” Such things, as soon as they are alleged, all men acknowledge to be good; they require no proof or further discourse to be assured of their goodness.

Nevertheless[22] whatever such principle there is, it was at the first found out by discourse, and drawn from out of the very bowels of heaven and earth. For we are to note, that things in the world are to us discernible, not only so far forth as serves for our vital preservation, but further also in a twofold higher respect. For first if all other uses were utterly taken away, yet the mind of man being by nature speculative and delighted with contemplation in itself, they ought[23] to be known even for mere knowledge and understanding’s sake. Yea further besides this, the knowledge of every least [230] thing in the whole world has in it a second peculiar benefit to us, inasmuch as it serves to minister rules, canons, and laws, for men to direct those actions by, which we properly term human. This did the very heathens themselves obscurely insinuate, by making Themis, which we call Jus, or Right, to be the daughter of heaven and earth.[24]

[6.] We know things either as they are in themselves, or as they are in mutual relation one to another. The knowledge of that which man is in reference to himself, and other things in relation to man, I may justly term the mother of all those principles, which are as it were edicts, statutes, and decrees, in that Law of Nature, by which human actions are framed. First therefore having observed that the best things, where they are not hindered, do still produce the best operations, (for which cause, where many things are to concur to one effect, the best is in all congruity of reason to guide the rest[25], that [by] it prevailing most, the work principally done by it may have greatest perfection:) when hereupon we come to observe in ourselves, of what excellency our souls are in comparison to our bodies, and the diviner part in relation to the baser of our souls; seeing that all these concur in producing human actions, it cannot be well unless the chiefest do command and direct the rest.[26] The soul then ought to conduct the body, and the spirit of our minds[27] the soul. This is therefore the first Law, whereby the highest power of the mind requires general obedience at the hands of all the rest concurring with it to action.

[7.] Touching the several grand mandates, which being imposed by the understanding faculty of the mind must be obeyed by the Will of Man, they are by the same method found out, whether they import our duty towards God or towards man.

Touching the one, I may not here pause[28] to explain[29], by what degrees of discourse the minds even of mere natural men have attained to know, not only that there is a God, but also what power, force, wisdom, and other properties that God has, and how all things depend on him. This being therefore presupposed, from that known relation which God has [231] to us as to children,[30] and to all good things as to effects of which [he] himself is the principal cause,[31] these axioms and laws of nature[32] concerning our duty have arisen[:] “that in all things we go about his aid is by prayer to be craved:”[33] “that he cannot have sufficient honour done to him, but the utmost of that we can do to honour him we must;”[34] which is in effect the same that we read, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind:” (Deut. 6:5) which Law our Saviour does term “The first and the great commandment.” (Matt. 22:38)

Touching the next, which as our Saviour adds is “like unto this,” (he means in amplitude and largeness, inasmuch as it is the root out of which all Laws of duty towards men have grown, as out of the former all offices of religion towards God,) the like natural inducement has brought men to know that it is their duty no less to love others than themselves. For seeing those things which are equal must necessarily all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive all good, even as much at every man’s hand as any man can wish for his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless [I] myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men, we all being of one and the same nature? To have anything offered them repugnant to this desire must necessarily in all respects grieve them as much as me: so that if I do harm I must look to suffer; there being no reason that others should show greater measure of love to me than they have [had] by me shown to them. My desire therefore to be loved by my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposes upon me a natural duty of bearing towards them fully the like affection. From this relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, natural Reason has drawn for direction of life several rules and canons, [of] which no man is ignorant;[35] as namely, “That because we would take no harm, we must [232] therefore do none;” “That since we would not be in anything severely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all severity in our dealings[36];” “That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain;”[37] with such like; in which to wade further would be tedious, and to our present purpose not altogether so necessary, seeing that on these two general heads already mentioned all other particular points[38] are dependent.[39]

[8.] Wherefore the natural measure by which to judge our doings, is the sentence of Reason, determining and setting down what is good to be done. Which sentence is either mandatory, showing what must be done; or else permissive, declaring only what may be done; or thirdly admonitory, explaining[40] what is the most convenient for us to do. The first takes place, where the comparison does stand altogether between doing and not doing of one thing which in itself is absolutely good or evil; as it would have been for Joseph to yield or not to yield to the impotent desire of his lewd mistress, the one evil the other good simply.[41] The second is, when of divers things evil, all being inevitable[42], we are permitted to take one; which one saving only in case of so great urgency should not otherwise be taken; as in the matter of divorce among the Jews.[43] The last, when of divers things good, one is principal and most eminent; as in their act who sold their possessions and laid the price at the Apostles’ feet;[44] which possessions they might have retained for themselves without sin: again, in the Apostle St. Paul’s own choice to maintain himself by his own labour;[45] whereas in living by the Church’s maintenance, as others did, there had been no offence committed. In Goodness therefore there is a latitude or extent, by which it comes to pass that even of good actions some are better than others; whereas [233] otherwise one man could not excel another, but all should be either absolutely good, as hitting exactly[46] that indivisible point or centre in which goodness consists; or else missing it they should be excluded out of the number of well-doers. Degrees of well-doing there could be none, except perhaps in the seldomness and oftenness of doing well. But the nature of Goodness being thus ample, a Law is properly that which Reason in such sort defines to be good that it must be done. And the Law of Reason or human Nature is that which men by discourse of natural Reason have rightly found out themselves to be all forever bound to in their actions.

[9.] Laws of Reason have these marks to be known by. Such as keep them resemble most lively in their voluntary actions that very manner of working which Nature herself does necessarily observe in the course of the whole world. The works of Nature are all necessary[47], beautiful, without superfluity or defect; even so theirs[48], if they be framed according to that which the Law of Reason teaches. Secondly, those Laws are investigable by Reason, without the help of supernatural and divine Revelation. Finally, in such sort they are investigable, that the knowledge of them is general, the world has always been acquainted with them; according to that which one in Sophocles observes concerning a branch of this Law, “It is no child of to-day’s or yesterday’s birth, but has been no man knows how long since.”[49] It is not agreed upon by one, or two, or few, but by all. Which we may not so understand, as if every particular man in the whole world did know and confess whatever the Law of Reason does contain; but this Law is such that being proposed no man can reject it as unreasonable and unjust. Again, there is nothing in it that any man (having natural perfection of reason[50] and ripeness of judgment) may [not] by labour and travail find out. And to conclude, the general principles of it are such, as it is not easy to find men ignorant of them, therefore Law rational []—which men commonly use to call the Law of Nature, meaning thereby the Law which human Nature knows itself in reason universally bound to, which also [234] for that cause may be termed most fitly the Law of Reason—this Law, I say, comprehends all those things which men by the light of their natural understanding evidently know, or at least may know, to be seemly or unseemly[51], virtuous or vicious, good or evil for them to do.

[10.] Now although it be true, which some have said, that “whatever is done amiss, the Law of Nature and Reason thereby is transgressed,”[52] because even those offences which are by their special qualities breaches of supernatural laws, do also, because[53] they are generally evil, violate in general that principle of Reason, which wills universally to fly from evil: yet we do not[54] therefore so far extend the Law of Reason, as to contain in it all manner laws to which reasonable creatures are bound, but (as has been shown) we restrain it to those duties only, which all men by force of natural reason[55] either do or might understand to be such duties as concern all men. “Certain half-waking men there are” (as Saint Augustine notes), “who neither altogether asleep in folly, nor yet thoroughly awake in the light of true understanding, have thought that there is not at all anything just and righteous in itself; but look, to that to which[56] nations are inured, [and] the same they take to be right and just. Whereupon their conclusion is, that seeing each sort of people has a different kind of right from the others, and that which is right of its own nature must be everywhere one and the same, therefore in itself there is nothing right. These good folk,” says he, (“that I may not trouble their minds[57] with rehearsal of too many things,) have not looked so far into the world as to perceive that, ‘Do as thou wouldest be done unto,’ is a sentence which all nations [235] under heaven are agreed upon. Refer this sentence to the love of God, and it extinguishes all heinous crimes; refer it to the love of thy neighbour, and all grievous wrongs it banishes out of the world.”[58] Wherefore as touching the Law of Reason, this was (it seems) Saint Augustine’s judgment: namely, that there are in it some things which stand as principles universally agreed upon; and that out of those principles, which are in themselves evident, the greatest moral duties we owe towards God or man may without any great difficulty be concluded.

[11.] If then it be here demanded, by what means it should come to pass (the greatest part of the moral Law being so easy for all men to know) that so many thousands of men nevertheless have been ignorant even of principal moral duties, not imagining the breach of them to be sin: I deny not that[59] lewd and wicked custom, beginning perhaps at the first among few, afterwards spreading into greater multitudes, and so continuing from time to time, may be of force even in plain things to smother the light of natural understanding; because men will not bend their minds[60] to examine whether things to which they have been accustomed be good or evil. For example’s sake, that grosser kind of heathenish idolatry, whereby they worshipped the very works of their own hands, was an absurdity to reason so palpable, that the Prophet David comparing idols and idolaters together makes almost no distinction[61] between them, but the one in a manner as much without mind[62] and sense as the other; “They that make them are like unto them, and so are all that trust in them” (Ps. 135:18). That in which an idolater does seem so absurd and foolish is by the Wise Man thus expressed, “He is not ashamed to speak to that which has no life, he calls on him that is weak for health, he prays for life to him which is dead, of him which has no experience he requires help, for his journey he appeals[63] to him which is not able to go, for gain and work and success in his affairs he seeks furtherance of him that has no manner of power” (Wis. 13:17). The cause of which senseless stupidity is afterwards imputed to custom. “When a father mourned grievously for his son that was taken away suddenly, he [236] made an image for him that was once dead, whom now he worships as a god, ordaining to his servants ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus by process of time this wicked custom prevailed, and was kept as a law;” (Wis. 14:15–16) the authority of rulers, the ambition of craftsmen, and such like means thrusting forward the ignorant, and increasing their superstition.

To this which the Wise Man has spoken something besides may be added. For whatever we have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter, concerning the force of man’s natural understanding, this we always desire in addition[64] to be understood; that there is no kind of faculty or power in man or any other creature, which can rightly perform the functions allotted to it, without perpetual aid and concurrence of that Supreme Cause of all things. [A]s oft as we cause God in his justice to withdraw [t]he benefit of this [aid], there can no other thing follow than that which the Apostle notes, even [that] men endowed with the light of reason [] walk nevertheless “in the vanity of their mind, having their cogitations darkened, and being strangers from the life of God through the ignorance which is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts” (Eph. 4:17–18). And this cause is mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, speaking of the ignorance of idolaters, who see not how the manifest Law of Reason condemns their gross iniquity and sin. “They have not in them,” says he, “so much thought[65] as to think, ‘Shall I bow to the stock of a tree?’ All knowledge and understanding is taken from them; for God has shut their eyes that they cannot see” (Is. 44:18–19).

That which we say in this case of idolatry serves for all other things, in which the like kind of general blindness has prevailed against the manifest Laws of Reason. Within the compass of which laws we do not only comprehend whatever may be easily known to belong to the duty of all men, but even whatever may possibly be known to be of that quality, so that the same be by necessary consequence deduced out of clear and manifest principles. For if once we descend to probable inferences[66] [of] what is convenient for men, we are then in the territory where free and arbitrary determinations and[67] Human Laws take place; which laws are after to be considered.