So we see, as the acorn cannot grow without appropriating the elements already prepared for it in the soil and the sky; and as the carbon cannot burn without laying hold of the oxygen already existing for it in the atmosphere of the room; and as the fish cannot swim without utilizing the water already adjusted to its fins; so man cannot fill out the possibilities of his being without obeying the laws he finds already ordained for his will, when he comes into the world. These laws converge about his will in the home where he first sees the light, and are always deducible from the particular relations in which, at any time, his moral life is placed. They are as real as the laws of heat and motion and gravity. They run out from the home through the school, and from the school through all the continents of the social realm. They grow out of the truth of the facts of the family, the school, and society. They are as fundamental, necessary, and divine as the family, the school, and society. By observing them, man is able to turn into his character the tenderness of the home, the learning of the school, and the resources of society. VI. The authority of the laws which govern society is not found in the fact that the laws have been made by the will of the majority, or the will of the minority, or by the will of a king, or by the wills of any or all of the people; but because they are founded in the constitution of human nature. The basis for the constitution of human nature is the mind of God, who created man in his own image. Social laws have authority, then, because they are consonant with the nature of man, and have their source in the will of God. It is easy to show, however, from the records of history, that nations have often lived under laws imposed upon them that contradicted every principle of human nature. Men were accustomed once to find the laws of society as well as the laws of nature, not from the study of men, or from the study of the objects of nature, but in the depths of their own imaginations. In former times men met in convention and council and determined by resolution the shape of the earth and the sun’s method of movement. They also subjected themselves to the criticism of posterity by cutting the heads of the people off who did not agree with them. But it gradually dawned on the human mind that to find out for certain the shape of the earth it might be well to devote a little study to the earth itself. Thus it happened that in the course of events men ceased to read laws into God’s material universe from the boundless realms of their fancy and conceit, and fell upon the more rational habit of taking the laws that were already there. Herein is the difference between mediæval and modern times.