We therefore believe in the law of nature, and regret that our opinion is not shared by Mr. Roscher, at least that he does not explicitly enough express his faith in it, nor apply it broadly enough in the beautiful work which we are happy to render 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 division, of natural law, the law of nations, and the civil law, is proof, from the meaning he attaches to them, either of a misunderstanding or of the imperfect idea which the Stoics had conceived of the essence of natural law. In vain Cujas exhausted all the resources of his noble intellect to explain it.(13) It is necessary to draw a distinction between physical law and the law (_droit_) of intelligent beings. Doubtless the existence of men as well as that of animals is limited by time. They both live and die; but the soul escapes the necessities of material nature. The moment there is question of _right_, intelligence governs, reason comes into play, and the science of right and wrong is appealed to as a guide. Hence the _natural_ law of the human species is not the physical law which all creatures obey. It was necessary for us to insist upon these principles. It was necessary for us to show that there is a law independent of positive and local law, a law which is not the expression of an arbitrary will, but an emanation from the nature of things.(14) Hence come the features in common which we meet with everywhere, and the variable forms which develop law in harmony with the special conditions of each civil society. We must descend into the very depths of human nature to discover these eternal and permanent laws; and if the mere effort of the mind should not reach them directly, they might be discovered in the phenomena of the life of nations. History affords us the counter-proof and confirmation of the philosophical doctrine. The development of society does not afford a mathematical expression of these higher truths. It gives them a form which is unceasingly modified in the written law. The person who discovers in them nothing but an absolute rule, looks upon the changes as evidences of caprice and error. He alone understands the revolutions of things who knows their cause and the necessity which produces them. Solon was right when he gave the Athenians not the most perfect laws, but the best which they could bear.