So, for instance, it is quite the conventional thing to say that the speculations of the Physiocrats were dominated and shaped by the preconception of Natural Rights. Account has been taken of the effect of natural-rights preconceptions upon the Physiocratic schemes of policy and economic reform as well as upon the details of their doctrines.[4] But little has been said of the significance of these preconceptions for the lower courses of the Physiocrats' theoretical structure. And yet that habit of mind to which the natural-rights view is wholesome and adequate is answerable both for the point of departure and for the objective point of the Physiocratic theories, both for the range of facts to which they turned and for the terms in which they were content to formulate their knowledge of the facts which they handled. The failure of their critics to place themselves at the Physiocratic point of view has led to much destructive criticism of their work; whereas, when seen through Physiocratic eyes, such doctrines as those of the net product and of the barrenness of the artisan class appear to be substantially true. The speculations of the Physiocrats are commonly accounted the first articulate and comprehensive presentation of economic theory that is in line with later theoretical work. The Physiocratic point of view may, therefore, well be taken as the point of departure in an attempt to trace that shifting of aims and norms of procedure that comes into view in the work of later economists when compared with earlier writers. Physiocratic economics is a theory of the working-out of the Law of Nature (_loi naturelle_) in its economic bearing, and this Law of Nature is a very simple matter. Les lois naturelles sont ou physiques ou morales. On entend ici, par loi physique, _le cours regle de tout evenement physique de l'ordre naturel, evidemment le plus avantageux au genre humain_. On entend ici, par loi morale, _la regle de toute action humaine de l'ordre morale, conforme a l'ordre physique evidemment le plus avantageux au genre humain_. Ces lois forment ensemble ce qu'on appelle la _loi naturelle_. Tous les hommes et toutes les puissances humaines doivent etre soumis a ces lois souveraines, instituees par l'Etre-Supreme: elles sont immuables et irrefragables, et les meilleures lois possible.[5]