[Footnote 1: God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that to another, etc.) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule his actions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding (_in foro externo_), but always and everywhere binding on the conscience (_in foro interno_). Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civil laws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler _ought_ to govern in accordance with the law of nature.] %(d) Lord Herbert of Cherbury.%--Between Bacon (1605, 1620) and Hobbes (1642, 1651) stands Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), who, by his work _De Veritate_ (1624),[1] became the founder of deism, that theory of "natural religion," which, in opposition to the historical dogmatic faith of the Church theology, takes the reason, which is the same in all men, as its basis and morality for its content. Lord Herbert introduces his philosophy of religion by a theory of knowledge which makes universal consent the highest criterion of truth (_summa veritatis norma consensus universalis_), and bases knowledge on certain self-evident principles (_principia_), common to all men in virtue of a natural instinct, which gives safe guidance. These common notions (_notitiae communes_) precede all reflective inquiry, as well as all observation and experience, which would be impossible without them. The most important among them are the religious and ethical maxims of conscience. [Footnote 1: _Tractatus de Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibile, et a False_. Also, _De Religione Gentilium_, 1645, complete 1663.] This natural instinct is both an impulse toward truth and a capacity for good or impulse to self-preservation. The latter extends not only to the individual but to all things with which the individual is connected, to the species, nay, to all the rest of the world, and its final goal is eternal happiness: all natural capacities are directed toward the highest good or toward God. The sense for the divine may indeed be lulled to sleep or led astray by our free will, but not eradicated. To be rational and to be religious are inseparable; it is religion that distinguishes man from the brute, and no people can be found in which it is lacking. If atheists really exist, they are to be classed with the irrational and the insane.