Doing what comes naturally: a return to foundations.

One of my favorite passages in literature is the following from Cicero: "There is in fact a true law - namely, right reason - which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal. ... Neither the Senate nor the People can absolve us from our obligation to obey this law, and it requires no Sextus Aelius to expound and interpret it. It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor will it be one rule today and another tomorrow. But there will be one law, eternal and unchangeable, binding at all times upon all peoples; and there will be, as it were, one common master and ruler of men, namely God, who is the author of this law, its interpreter, and its sponsor."

This is the famous doctrine of natural law - a doctrine which the Catholic church, to its great credit, has kept alive through the centuries, and to its even greater credit keeps alive today in a cultural atmosphere intensely hostile to the idea. Unfortunately, the church has also given the doctrine something of a bad name in the twentieth century by linking very crude versions of it to its teaching on contraception.

The Ciceronian passage is pure Stoicism, even though Cicero himself wasn't a Stoic, only a kind of semi-Stoic. For Stoicism the natural law was appropriately called "natural" in at least four senses.

For one thing, it is known naturally. To recognize the basic precepts of natural law it is not necessary to enroll in an ethics course or to engage in long trains of abstract reasoning. Rather, moral knowledge is innate or self-evident, available to all normal and mature humans.

Second, it is natural in that it applies to all humans by virtue of their nature, not by virtue of their being citizens of Rome, Athens, New York, etc.

Third, it governs human nature, directing it to its true end. For the Stoics this end was the possession and activity of the virtues, above all the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control. Life in accord with nature therefore is the life of virtue.

Finally, this law ultimately derives from God, who, according to the Stoics, is both the author of nature and its in-dwelling soul. Hence to call the moral law natural is another way of saying it is God's law.

Some nineteenth-century wag said the Unitarians believed in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston. Drop the third part of that remark and substitute "the common law of the human race," and you have a neat summary of the Stoic worldview.

Stoicism's idea of natural law represents in many ways the essence of classical humanism. It was an idea that molded Roman law, culminating in the great code of Justinian. When, early in its history, Christianity embraced the theory of natural law, it was thus also embracing both classical humanism and the Roman legal ideal.

Looked at from the point of view of intellectual history, the modern rejection of natural law began nearly five centuries ago with the coming of Protestantism, which tended to feel that the theory gave too much credit to human reason and too little recognition to the need for divine revelation. But the Protestant critique really did not matter all that much; for by the sixteenth century natural law had been so absorbed into the very bones and muscles of Christianity that even those who rejected the idea unwittingly believed in it. And for that matter, not all reformers were unhappy with the idea: Martin Luther didn't like it, but his close associate Philip Melancthon thought it was just fine.

The truly serious attack on natural law came with the rise of skepticism. Montaigne, a somewhat older contemporary of Shakespeare, must be given credit (or blame, if you prefer) as the father of skepticism. He delighted in pointing out certain odd practices, e.g., cannibalism, that flourished in newly discovered regions of the earth. "If there is such a thing as natural law," he was in effect asking, "how come the cannibals haven't heard of it?"

The idea of natural law had a great revival in the eighteenth century, especially in anti-Christian Enlightenment circles, where it was utilized to score points against revealed religion. "Who needs Christianity as a guide to the moral life when we have natural law? Who needs commandments created by a handful of ancient Semitic tribes when we have the oracle of God within our breasts?"

This eighteenth-century revival spilled over from Europe to America, where it found its way into the Declaration of Independence. If you could transport an ancient Stoic via time machine to Philadelphia in 1776, he would have no difficulty recognizing the Stoic framework of the Declaration: God the author of nature and the human race; God the lawgiver; the moral law that governs all humans qua human; a system of human rights based on this law; and the natural or self-evident knowledge of natural law. Hardly an article of the ancient creed has been lost.

Despite the revival, the dike did not hold against the rising tide of skepticism. Among "progressive" types it increasingly became an agreed-upon truth that morality is a human construction, not a transcendent law. Those of an anthropological bent saw it as a social construction; those of a more romantic turn of mind saw it as the construction of gifted individuals. But in either case it was a human invention, not a human discovery of a divine invention.

Now this was all very well as long as it was a sport engaged in by the playful Victorian gentry. Such gentlefolk might adopt a theory that says "Anything goes," but their social breeding was far too fine, too well-mannered, for them to carry it to anything like its logical conclusion. Soon, however, the theory was taken up by plebeians, who lacked the benefit of "good breeding" to restrain them; and eventually by virtual sociopaths, who were restrained by nothing at all. You know the rest of the story: it is told in the history of twentieth-century totalitarianism and mass murder.

Here in America, with its strong tradition of sectarian Protestantism, it took longer than in Europe for the idea to take hold that morality is a mere human construction. In the last thirty years it has finally caught on, but we are still in our gentry phase. That is, the bearers of the idea are upper-middle-class types with good educations, good jobs, good incomes, good manners, and a very attractive style of life. They are civilized people propagating an uncivilized theory. At the beginning all they really wanted was sexual freedom, permission to sleep around. This soon led to a defense of abortion, which is rather a more serious matter. And this in turn is now leading to a defense of assisted suicide and euthanasia. We are approaching the edge of the cliff, if we haven't already gone over. And yet these gentry, as I said, are attractive and likable folks.

The older I get the more inclined I am to adopt long views. Thus I have my doubts that the American republic can remain healthy once it repudiates its foundational ideas.