Aristotle Law Quotes

I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The Law is Reason free from Passion.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.

Again what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But,

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law & justice he is the worst.

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

The noble things and the just things, which the political art examines, admit of much dispute and variability, such that they are held to exist by law11 alone and not by nature.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.   —Aristotle

Well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges.

One who asks the law to rule, therefore, is held to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect without appetite.

where the laws are not authoritative demagogues arise. For the populace becomes a monarch when it turns from many into a single composite, since the many are in authority not as particular persons but all together.

Even when the laws have been written down, they ought not always remain unchanged.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

The best man, then, must legislate, and laws must be passed, but these laws will have no authority when they miss the mark, though in all other cases retaining their authority. But when the law cannot determine a point at all, or not well, should the one best man or should all decide? According to our present practice assemblies meet, sit in judgment, deliberate, and decide, and their judgments an relate to individual cases. Now any member of the assembly, taken separately, is certainly inferior to the wise man. But the state is made up of many individuals. And as a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a better judge of many things than any individual.

When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he foreseen the case would arise.

Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been.

It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws.

Change in an art is not like change in law; for law has no strength with respect to obedience apart from habit, and this is not created except over a period of time. Hence the easy alteration of existing laws in favor of new and different ones weakens the power of law itself.

The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws.

The most important thing to accept here is the complete impossibility of compromise or even meaningful communication with your attackers. SJWs do not engage in rational debate because they are not rational, and they do not engage in honest discourse because they do not believe in objective truth. They do not compromise because the pure spirit of enlightened progressive social justice dare not sully itself with the evil of the outdated Endarkenment. They are the emotion-driven rhetoric-speakers of whom Aristotle wrote: “Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.

Beliefs about suicide varied considerably in ancient Greece. The Stoics and Epicureans believed strongly in the individual’s right to choose the means and time of his death. Others were less accepting of the idea. In Thebes and Athens, suicide was not against the law, but those who killed themselves were denied funeral rites and the hand that had been used for the act was severed from the arm. Aristotle regarded suicide as an act of cowardice, as well as an act against the state; so, too, did Pythagoras.

They are the ones who are responsible for the fact that decrees and not laws are authoritative, by referring everything to the populace. They end up becoming powerful by having the populace be in authority over everything, while they themselves have authority over the opinion of the populace, since the multitude is persuaded by them. Also,

One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.

In The Politics, Aristotle observed that citizens “who enjoy too many advantages—strength, wealth, connexions, and so forth—are both unwilling to obey, and ignorant how to obey, the law.

Law . . . has the power that compels; and law is reason that proceeds from a sort of prudence and understanding. . . . [P]eople become hostile to an individual human being who opposes their impulses, even if he is correct in opposing them, whereas a law's prescription of what is decent is not burdensome.

as architect of choosing... choose. to. live. awakened. entirely. wholly. wildly powerful,  deeply masterful,  authentically creative, thriving.  this is not a hoped-for possible self. [reminder: this is an immutable Law of your being] needing not to learn the skill of being whole,  the antidote is to unlearn the habit of living incompletely here’s the practice: ‘know thyself‘—its about spirit  righteousness is underrated elevate connection with the changeless essence seek similitude with the will of Source and will of self 'choose thyself'—its about substance sacred. sagacious. spacious. in thought, word and deed— intend to: honor virtue. innovate enthusiastically. master integrity. 'become who you are'—its about style  a human, being an entrepreneur of life experiences a human, being a purveyor of preferences being-well with the known experience of soul, in service your relationship with insecurities, contradictions, & failures? obstacles or...invitations to grow? [mindset forms manifestation] emotions are messengers are gifts data for discernment: dare to deconstruct them your fears a belief renovation: fear.less. & aspire towards ascendance, anyway support your shine lean into the Light be.come. incandescent as architect of choosing, I choose...  to disrupt the energy of the status quo, to eclipse the realms of ordinary, & to live--a life-well lived. w/ spirit, substance & style.

In the discoveries of science the harmony of the spheres is also now the harmony of life. And as the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact. Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn. As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in the final days of the second millennium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished - the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.

We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does any one else deliberate about his end. They assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last.

Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants. In founding a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the ancient philosophers, called tyranny.

Nothing is more absolutely necessary than to provide that the highest class, not only when in office, but when out of office, should have leisure and not disgrace themselves in any way; and to this his attention should be first directed. Even if you must have regard to wealth, in order to secure leisure, yet it is surely a bad thing that the greatest offices, such as those of kings and generals, should be bought. The law which allows this abuse makes wealth of more account than virtue, and the whole state becomes avaricious.

From whence it is evident, that those who seek for what is just, seek for a mean; now law is a mean.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. —Aristotle

You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends...I don't like this position. I mistrust generalized hatred. I feel like one of those twelfth century monks raving on about how evil women are and how they must cover themselves up completely when they go out lest they lead men into evil thoughts. The assumption that the men are the ones who matter, and that the women exist only in relation to them, is so silent and underrunning that ever we never picked it up until recently. But after all, look at what we read. I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Freud and Erikson; I read de Montherlant and Joyce and Lawrence and sillier people like Miller and Mailer and Roth and Philip Wylie. I read the Bible and Greek myths and didn't question why all later redactions relegated Gaea-Tellus and Lilith to a footnote and made Saturn the creator of the world. I read or read about, without much question, the Hindus and the Jews, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, St.Paul, Luther, Sam Johnson, Rousseau, Swift...well, you understand. For years I didn't take it personally. So now it is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking suspicion that the four thousand years of remarks are correct. These days I feel like an outlaw, a criminal. Maybe that's what the people perceive who look at me so strangely as I walk the beach. I feel like an outlaw not only because I think that men are rotten and women are great, but because I have come to believe that oppressed people have the right to use criminal means to survive. Criminal means being, of course, defying the laws passed by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in line. Such a position takes you scarily close to advocating oppression itself, though. We are bound in by the terms of the sentence. Subject-verb-object. The best we can do is turn it around. and that's no answer, is it?

And therefore this is another error of Aristotle’s politics, that in a well-ordered commonwealth, not men should govern, but the laws. What man, that has his natural senses, though he can neither write nor read, does not find himself governed by them he fears, and believes can kill or hurt him when he obeyeth not? Or that believes the law can hurt him; that is, words and paper, without the hands and swords of men?

I wonder if you've ever considered how strange it is that the educational and character-shaping structures of our culture expose us but a single time in our lives to the ideas of Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, Herodotus, Augustine, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Descartes, Rousseau, Newton, Racine, Darwin, Kant, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Freud, Marx, Einstein, and dozens of others of the same rank, but expose us annually, monthly, weekly, and even daily to the ideas of persons like Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, and Buddha. Why is it, do you think, that we need quarterly lectures on charity, while a single lecture on the laws of thermodynamics is presumed to last us a lifetime? Why is the meaning of Christmas judged to be so difficult of comprehension that we must hear a dozen explications of it, not once in a lifetime, but every single year, year after year after year?

And it may also be affirmed, that experience itself gives a proof of this; for the ancient laws are too simple and barbarous; which allowed the Greeks to wear swords in the city, and to buy their wives of each [1269a]. other.

Dynamical beauty transcends specific objects and phenomena, and invites us to imagine the expanse of possibilities. For example, the sizes and shapes of actual planetary orbits are not simple. They are neither the (compounded) circles of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Nicolaus Copernicus, nor even the more nearly accurate ellipses of Kepler, but rather curves that must be calculated numerically, as functions of time, evolving in complicated ways that depend on the positions and masses of the Sun and the other planets. There is great beauty and simplicity here, but it is only fully evident when we understand the deep design. The appearance of particular objects does not exhaust the beauty of the laws.

It is also an error in democracies for the demagogues to endeavour to make the common people superior to the laws; and thus by setting them at variance with the rich, dividing one city into two; whereas they ought rather to speak in favour of the rich.

The virtue of tolerance is relatively new to political debate; Aristotle did not discuss it. From the way the debate is usually framed, however, one gets the impression that all one has to do to achieve tolerance is to avoid the vice of narrowminded repressiveness. On the contrary, like other virtues, tolerance is opposed by not one vice but two, with grave dangers in each direction.5 The diagram should look not like this: Intolerance Tolerance but like this: Narrowminded Repressiveness—Tolerance—Soft-headed Indulgence

It has long been presumed that the diversity of constitutional forms makes for an optimal result. In reality, it creates a system of impediments that makes popular reform nearly impossible. As with Polybius and Cicero, so with Aristotle, and so with the framers of the United States Constitution in 1787 . . .—all have been mindful of the leveling threats of democratic forces and the need for a constitutional “mix” that allows only limited participation by the demos, with a dominant role allotted to an elite executive power. . . . Diluting democratic power with a preponderantly undemocratic mix does not create an admirable “balance” and “stability.” In actual practice, the diversity of form more often has been a subterfuge, allowing an appearance of popular participation in order to lend legitimacy to oligarchic dominance.

The main factor which determines success or failure in human life is the acquisition of certain powers, for Happiness is just the exercise or putting forth of these in actual living, everything else is secondary and subordinate. These powers arise from the due development of certain natural aptitudes which belong (in various degrees) to human nature as such and therefore to all normal human beings. In their developed form they are known as virtues (the Greek means simply "goodnesses," "perfections," "excellences," or "fitnesses"), some of them are physical, but others are psychical, and among the latter some, and these distinctively or peculiarly human, are "rational," i e, presuppose the possession and exercise of mind or intelligence. These last fall into two groups, which Aristotle distinguishes as Goodnesses of Intellect and Goodnesses of Character. They have in common that they all excite in us admiration and praise of their possessors, and that they are not natural endowments, but acquired characteristics But they differ in important ways. (1) the former are excellences or developed powers of the reason as such—of that in us which sees and formulates laws, rules, regularities systems, and is content in the vision of them, while the latter involve a submission or obedience to such rules of something in us which is in itself capricious and irregular, but capable of regulation, viz our instincts and feelings, (2) the former are acquired by study and instruction, the latter by discipline. The latter constitute "character," each of them as a "moral virtue" (literally "a goodness of character"), and upon them primarily depends the realisation of happiness.

But there was seed as well that fell on good ground. Lepers and slaves were not the most defenceless of God’s children. Across the Roman world, wailing at the sides of roads or on rubbish tips, babies abandoned by their parents were a common sight. Others might be dropped down drains, there to perish in the hundreds. The odd eccentric philosopher aside, few had ever queried this practice. Indeed, there were cities who by ancient law had made a positive virtue of it: condemning to death deformed infants for the good of the state. Sparta, one of the most celebrated cities in Greece, had been the epitome of this policy, and Aristotle himself had lent it the full weight of his prestige. Girls in particular were liable to be winnowed ruthlessly. Those who were rescued from the wayside would invariably be raised as slaves. Brothels were full of women who, as infants, had been abandoned by their parents—so much so that it had long provided novelists with a staple of their fiction. Only a few peoples—the odd German tribe and, inevitably, the Jews—had stood aloof from the exposure of unwanted children. Pretty much everyone else had always taken it for granted. Until, that was, the emergence of a Christian people.

Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.

Government (to define it de jure, or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and not of men. And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern prudence) is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.

Moreover, he who would place the supreme power in mind, would place it in God and the laws; but he who entrusts man with it, gives it to a wild beast, for such his appetites sometimes make him; for passion influences those who are in power, even the very best of men: for which reason law is reason without desire.

But of all the things which I have mentioned that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution, if the laws are democratical, democratically or oligarchically, if the laws are oligarchical. For there may be a want of self-discipline in states as well as in individuals. Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible. Whereas among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both more inclined and better able to make a revolution. And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation.

And to the truth of this testimony is borne by what takes place in communities: because the law-givers make the individual members good men by habituation, and this is the intention certainly of every law-giver, and all who do not effect it well fail of their intent; and herein consists the difference between a good Constitution and a bad.

It should also be known, that it often happens that a free state, where the supreme power is in the laws, may not be democratic, and yet in consequence of the established manners and customs of the people, may be governed as if it was; so, on the other hand, where the laws may countenance a more democratic form of government, these may make the state inclining to an oligarchy; and this chiefly happens when there has been any alteration in the government; for the people do not easily change, but love their own ancient customs; and it is by small degrees only that one thing takes place of another; so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about a revolution in the state.

philosophers warred over the best governmental regime for ensuring the enforcement of virtue (that is, right reason); the ancients were far less concerned with natural rights than the imposition of natural law. Thus, Plato argued (possibly ironically) in The Republic for a heavy-handed regime of philosopher-kings controlling all aspects of human life, and rigidly categorizing human beings by quality;31 Aristotle argued instead in favor of a system that would combine aspects of democracy with aristocracy, relying on Greek tradition for that model.32 Cicero, following Aristotle’s lead, championed a mixed system—a system of shared government responsibility.33 As Western history unfolded, it became clear that unchecked monarchies could limit rights as

No scientist before Leonardo had methodically shown how birds stay aloft. Most had simply embellished on Aristotle, who mistakenly thought that birds were supported by air the way ships were by water.12 Leonardo realized that keeping aloft in air requires fundamentally different dynamics than doing so in water, because birds are heavier than air and are thus subject to being pulled down by gravity. The first two folios of his Codex on the Flight of Birds deal with the laws of gravity, which he calls the “attraction of one object to another.” The force of gravity, he wrote, acts in the direction of “an imaginary line between the centers of each object.”13 He then described how to calculate the center of gravity of a bird, a pyramid, and other complex shapes.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.

Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentment, is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock,--as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.

There is also another defect in his laws worthy of censure, which Plato has given in his book of Laws; that the whole constitution was calculated only for the business of war: it is indeed excellent to make them conquerors; for which reason the preservation of the state depended thereon. The destruction of it commenced with their victories: for they knew not how to be idle, or engage in any other employment than war.

Philosophy is one of those subjects, like astrophysics and neurosurgery, that are not for the fainthearted. To delve into the absolutes of the human experience, to seek to advance the progress of enlightenment first expounded by the likes of the revered Aristotle and Plato, to search for the answers to the profound questions of the universe, often at the risk of deadly reprisal from entrenched powers, requires not only brilliance and tenacity but a deep sense of purpose. But even among this select fraternity, [René] Descartes stands out. From him did we get practical discoveries like coordinates in geometry and the law of refraction of light. But what he really did was to shake loose the human mind from the shackles of centuries of stultifying religious orthodoxy by creating an entirely original approach to reasoning: the Cartesian method.

You know when they get really against women? When all the scholars start studying philosophy.” The misogyny running through fiqh, said the Sheikh, was a matter not merely of scholars’ medieval mores, but of the influence of the Greek philosophers on them. Aristotle, a man who held that the subjugation of women was both “natural” and a “social necessity,” influenced key Muslim thinkers who shaped medieval fiqh, argued Akram. Before Aristotle became a core text, and before the medieval scholars enshrined their views on gender roles in Islamic law, men and women were accorded far more equal freedoms in Islam, he explained. He sketched peaks and troughs in the air, as if plotting the rise and fall of sexism through history. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” was reaching its crescendo above us. “So why do people get obsessed with following the schools of law?” I asked. “Why not just go back to the Quran?” A wide, bright smile. “People can

The laws of physics apply to everything equally, to stars as well as flowers. Botany and astronomy are separate sciences, but if they are somehow fundamentally inconsistent then there is something wrong with our theories. The need for such an all-encompassing vision was not really felt in the Classical past. Aristotle wrote very widely and was happy enough to draw analogies between disparate phenomena, but he was conspicuously silent on some topics (such as what we would now call chemistry) and gives little impression of the need for congruence and continuity. For encyclopedists such as Pliny, "local" explanations for things were often enough: phenomena are explained largely in terms of themselves, not in terms of other things. Where do the four humors, the bodily fluids that were thought to govern health, come from? Neither Galen nor Hippocrates, the two preeminent physicians of antiquity, tell us; they assume that it is just how things are.

Contrary to the preaching of dour labourists, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a bit of laziness. Great philosophers through the ages have argued in its favour. Aristotle explicitly recognized the necessity of aergia, laziness, for contemplative thought. Bertrand Russell wrote a celebrated essay, In Praise of Idleness. Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, authored a subversive book entitled The Right to be Lazy that communists detested because it made the case against forcing everybody to labour more intensively. Today, however, the words ‘idleness’ and ‘lazy’ are used pejoratively to convey indolence, time wasting and drift. What is wrong with idleness? In modern society, more than ever, we need to slow down and recall the wisdom of Cato when he said, ‘Never is a man more active than when he does nothing.’ We are in danger of losing the capacity to reflect, to deliberate, to ponder, even to communicate and to learn in the true sense of that term.

For a law derives all its strength from custom, and this requires long time to establish; so that, to make it an easy matter to pass from the established laws to other new ones, is to weaken the power of laws. Besides, here is another question; if the laws are to be altered, are they all to be altered, and in every goverment or not, and whether at the pleasure of one person or many? all which particulars will make a great difference; for which reason we will at present drop the inquiry, to pursue it at some other time.

First of all, therefore, it is proper that laws, properly enacted, should themselves define the issue of all cases as far as possible, and leave as little as possible to the discretion of the judges; in the first place, because it is easier to find one or a few men of good sense, capable of framing laws and pronouncing judgements, than a large number; secondly, legislation is the result of long consideration, whereas judgements are delivered on the spur of the moment, so that it is difficult for the judges properly to decide questions of justice or expediency. But

In democracies of the purest form they pursue a method which is contrary to their welfare; the reason of which is, that they define liberty wrong: now, there are two things which seem to be the objects of a democracy, that the people in general should possess the supreme power, and all enjoy freedom; for that which is just seems to be equal, and what the people think equal, that is a law: now, their freedom and equality consists in every one's doing what they please: that is in such a democracy every one may live as he likes; "as his inclination guides," in the words of Euripides: but this is wrong, for no one ought to think it slavery to live in subjection to government, but protection.

From a number of such laws he hoped to reach laws of the second degree of generality, and so on. A suggested law should be tested by being applied in new circumstances; if it worked in these circumstances it was to that extent confirmed. Some instances are specially valuable because they enable us to decide between two theories, each possible as far as previous observations are concerned; such instances are called 'prerogative' instances. Bacon not only despised the syllogism, but undervalued mathematics, presumably as insufficiently experimental. He was virulently hostile to Aristotle, but thought very highly of Democritus. Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything, he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes.

This description of physiology—as the exquisite matching of form and function, down to the molecular level—dates back to Aristotle. For Aristotle, living organisms were nothing more than exquisite assemblages of machines. Medieval biology had departed from that tradition, conjuring up “vital” forces and mystical fluids that were somehow unique to life—a last-minute deus ex machina to explain the mysterious workings of living organisms (and justify the existence of the deus). But biophysicists were intent on restoring a rigidly mechanistic description to biology. Living physiology should be explicable in terms of physics, biophysicists argued—forces, motions, actions, motors, engines, levers, pulleys, clasps. The laws that drove Newton’s apples to the ground should also apply to the growth of the apple tree. Invoking special vital forces or inventing mystical fluids to explain life was unnecessary. Biology was physics. Machina en deus.

Aristotle, who lived after the downfall of Sparta, gives a very hostile account of its constitution.5 What he says is so different from what other people say that it is difficult to believe he is speaking of the same place, e.g. 'The legislator wanted to make the whole State hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of men, but he has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury. The consequence is that in such a State wealth is too highly valued, especially if the citizens fall under the dominion of their wives, after the manner of most warlike races…. Even in regard to courage, which is of no use in daily life, and is needed only in war, the influence of the Lacedaemonian women has been most mischievous…. This license of the Lacedaemonian women existed from the earliest times, and was only what might be expected. For ... when Lycurgus, as tradition says, wanted to bring the women under his laws, they resisted, and he gave up the attempt.' He goes on to accuse Spartans of avarice, which he attributes to the unequal distribution of property. Although lots cannot be sold, he says, they can be given or bequeathed. Two-fifths of all the land, he adds, belongs to women. The consequence is a great diminution in the number of citizens: it is said that once there were ten thousand, but at the time of the defeat by Thebes there were less than one thousand. Aristotle criticizes every point of the Spartan constitution. He says that the ephors are often very poor, and therefore easy to bribe; and their power is so great that even kings are compelled to court them, so that the constitution has been turned into a democracy. The ephors, we are told, have too much licence, and live in a manner contrary to the spirit of the constitution, while the strictness in relation to ordinary citizens is so intolerable that they take refuge in the secret illegal indulgence of sensual pleasures.

When in the course of my work at the luminar, I was reviewing public law, from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond, I thought of an Anglo Saxon's axiom about human equality. He seeks it not in the ever-changing distribution of power and means, but in a constant: the fact that anyone can kill anyone else. This is a platitude, albeit reduced to a striking formula. The possibility of killing someone else is part of the potential of the anarch whom everyone carries around inside himself, even though he is seldom aware of that possibility. It always slumbers in the underground, even when two people exchange greetings in the street or avoid each other. When one stands atop a tower or in front of an oncoming train, that possibility is already drawing closer. Aside from the technological dangers, we also register the nearness of the Other. He can even be my brother. An old poet, Edgar Allen Poe, grasped this possibility in ‘Descent into the Maelstrom’. In any case, we watch our backs. Then comes the thronging in the catastrophe, the raft of the Méduse, the starving in the lifeboat. I want to indicate this only insofar as it concerns my service. In any event, I brought this knowledge into the Condor’s range, into the inner sanctum that Monseigneur described as his ‘Parvulo.’ I can kill him, dramatically or discreetly. His beverages – he especially likes a light red wine – ultimately pass through my hands. Now granted, it is unlikely that I would kill him, albeit not impossible. Who can tell what astrological conjunctions one may get involved in? So, for now, my knowledge is merely theoretical, though important insofar as it puts me in his level. Not only can I kill him; I can also grant him amnesty. This is in my hands. Naturally, I would not try to strike him just because he is tyrant – I am too well versed in history, especially the model that we have attained in Eumeswil. An immoderate tyrant settles his own hash. The execution can be left to the anarchists; that is all they think about.

Hence, although the method of deliberative and forensic Rhetoric is the same, and although the pursuit of the former is nobler and more worthy of a statesman than that of the latter, which is limited to transactions between private citizens, they say nothing about the former, but without exception endeavor to bring forensic speaking under the rules of art. The reason of this is that in public speaking it is less worth while to talk of what is outside the subject, and that deliberative oratory lends itself to trickery less than forensic, because it is of more general interest. For in the assembly the judges decide upon their own affairs, so that the only thing necessary is to prove the truth of the statement of one who recommends a measure, but in the law courts this is not sufficient; there it is useful to win over the hearers, for the decision concerns other interests than those of the judges, who, having only themselves to consider and listening merely for their own pleasure, surrender to the pleaders but do not give a real decision.That is why, as I have said before, in many places the law prohibits speaking outside the subject in the law courts, whereas in the assembly the judges themselves take adequate precautions against this.

he importance and influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can scarcely be exaggerated. A century after Darwin’s death, the great evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Ernst Mayr, wrote, ‘The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed prior to 1859… The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin went far beyond the confines of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age.’1 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s biographers, contend, ‘Darwin is arguably the best known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker—even Freud or Marx—this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.’2 In the words of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is… Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.’3 Dennett goes on to add, ‘If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.’4 The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Darwin begin their introduction by stating, ‘Some scientific thinkers, while not themselves philosophers, make philosophers necessary. Charles Darwin is an obvious case. His conclusions about the history and diversity of life—including the evolutionary origin of humans—have seemed to bear on fundamental questions about being, knowledge, virtue and justice.’5 Among the fundamental questions raised by Darwin’s work, which are still being debated by philosophers (and others) are these: ‘Are we different in kind from other animals? Do our apparently unique capacities for language, reason and morality point to a divine spark within us, or to ancestral animal legacies still in evidence in our simian relatives? What forms of social life are we naturally disposed towards—competitive and selfish forms, or cooperative and altruistic ones?’6 As the editors of the volume point out, virtually the entire corpus of the foundational works of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes to Kant to Hegel, has had to be re-examined in the light of Darwin’s work. Darwin continues to be read, discussed, interpreted, used, abused—and misused—to this day. As the philosopher and historian of science, Jean Gayon, puts it, ‘[T]his persistent positioning of new developments in relation to a single, pioneering figure is quite exceptional in the history of modern natural science.

In his well-known statement in the Poetics that poetry has a higher truth than history since it expresses truth of general application whereas that of history is partial and limited, he is not speaking as a scientist nor would the statement commend itself to the scientific mind outside of Greece. There is no evidence, again, of the scientist’s point of view in the great passage where he sets forth the reason for the work of his life, his search into the nature of all living things: The glory, doubtless, of the heavenly bodies fills us with more delight than the contemplation of these lowly things, but the heavens are high and far off, and the knowledge of celestial things that our senses give us, is scanty and dim. Living creatures, on the contrary, are at our door, and if we so desire we may gain full and certain knowledge of each and all. We take pleasure in a statue’s beauty; should not then the living fill us with delight? And all the more if in the spirit of the love of knowledge we search for causes and bring to light evidences of meaning. Then will nature’s purpose and her deep-seated laws be revealed in all things, all tending in her multitudinous work to one form or another of the beautiful. Did ever scientist outside of Greece so state the object of scientific research? To Aristotle, being a Greek, it was apparent that the full purpose of that high enterprise could not be expressed in any way except the way of poetry, and, being a Greek, he was able so to express it. Spirituality inevitably brings to our mind

Where do we find love and comfort in this comfortless, mechanical world? And above all, More wanted to know, where is God? Descartes’s answer was confident and pat. God was the omnipotent Legislator who has made everything and installed all the necessary rules that govern the universe, including the laws of mathematics, rather the way the manufacturer installs software on a new Android. Then God steps aside and lets His creation “do its thing.

Nature’s laws implies a lawgiver: it’s an idea as old as the Bible or Plato’s Timaeus. However, Newton now carried this further by making the physical nature of the cosmos itself proof of God’s spiritual presence. “He is omnipresent,” Newton wrote. “In Him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other; God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipotence of God.” In other words, the rich diversity of nature, combined with its symmetry and regularity, reflects the will of a benevolent God.

His first breach with the Church did not come with his famous Ninety-five Theses, which he posted on the Wittenberg church door on October 31, 1517. It came almost two months earlier, on September 4, when he published another set of theses, Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, which are less well-known but nearly as explosive. They asserted that a Christianity founded on the spiritual power of God’s grace—in effect Christianity in its Platonized form as received from Saint Augustine—and the view of law and nature derived from Aristotle could never be reconciled. “The whole Aristotelian ethic,” Luther wrote, “is grace’s worst enemy.” And so as the tidal wave of Reformation overwhelmed the heart of Europe and changed its religious and cultural contours forever, it also swept Aristotle almost out of sight.

Descartes’s worldview makes us spiders at the center of an enormous web not of our making. Or in his other famous formulation, we are the ghosts in the machine: souls in a world machine that operates inexorably and impersonally according to the laws of geometry and mechanics, while we operate the levers and spin the dials.

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government revealed that the political universe is run the same way, through natural laws that guide men’s behavior in the same sure way that they guide the movement of the planets.

Locke had found a kindred spirit in Aristotle. This was not the Aristotle of the schoolmen or the civic humanist of the Florentines, but the shrewd analyst of human nature in the Ethics. In Book V, Aristotle noted that some laws are common to all people, whether Persians and Greeks, Egyptians or Babylonians. All agree that murder and theft are wrong; all agree that our word is our bond and that contracts must be kept. The origin of these universal rules for conduct and justice can’t be written law, since all written law is based on them. So where did they come from? They come from our observation of nature, Aristotle said, and the experience of seeing what’s fair and what’s unfair in actual situations. From that experience, human beings extract a standard of justice that “has the same validity everywhere and does not depend on acceptance” by a particular people or government—but which is upheld by all of them and everywhere men institute fair and just laws.

Steeped in the Latin of Roman law, Europe’s jurists branded this agreement the pactum societatis. In their minds, it marked the birth of legitimate government. A couple of centuries later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave it a more famous name: the social contract. It’s not based on a signed piece of paper or original physical act. Like the axis of Galileo’s rotating earth, the social contract is imaginary, but it is still there, exerting its influence and power. Like any contract, it imposes obligations both on me and on my rulers.

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.”33 Was it possible that God would devise such a system of natural laws and put man in the middle of them in order to create a nation of slaves? Locke said no.

Today, Luther would not be at all surprised or distressed to see bestsellers like The God Delusion or The Atheist Manifesto—or see that their authors base their claims on reason. Nothing would be more natural. Man by his nature despises God. In our hearts, Luther says, we despise God’s commandments. “If it were possible, the will of every man would prefer a state of affairs where there was no law at all” and he was free to do whatever he wants.32 Human beings think they want freedom; what they really want is license.

Locke’s conclusion was startling, not to say world shattering. A monarch like Louis XIV, or any of his would-be imitators, in effect is at war with his subjects.§ When that happens, Locke asserted, then lawful government is at an end. We are all thrown back into the original state of nature. “Where the government is dissolved,” Locke explained, “the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative” body to act in their name.38 The social contract starts over from scratch. Government by popular consent is not just a good idea, as it was for Aristotle and Ockham. For Locke, it is an inescapable law of nature. It is what separates a society of free men from a society of slaves.

Liberty included an equality before the law, since all men are equal before God; and it included a generosity of spirit and independence of mind that Aristotle had recognized as the hallmark of the virtuous man and which Locke saw would prevent a state of normal liberty from degenerating into a “state of license”—in other words, a perpetual riot.

Newton’s God is a God who constantly watches over His creation. He provides it with universally true general laws, then thoughtfully provides man with the means to decipher them, namely reason. Newton also finally answered Henry More’s question about where God Himself was in this meticulously ordered universe. He is in between. His spirit provides the space through which all objects pass, from birds and trees to comets and stars in the sky; and His infinitude is found in the infinity of the cosmos,

Aristotle was the figure who dominated every part of the university curriculum, from Salerno and Toledo to Paris and Oxford and Louvain, from the seven liberal arts to medicine, law, and especially theology. Aristotle was, in the Arab phrase made famous by the poet Dante, “the Master of Those Who Know.” He was also the supreme teacher of all those who wanted to know. The standard way to learn any subject was first to read Aristotle’s own works on it line by line from cover to cover, then pore over the commentaries

Aristotle was the figure who dominated every part of the university curriculum, from Salerno and Toledo to Paris and Oxford and Louvain, from the seven liberal arts to medicine, law, and especially theology. Aristotle was, in the Arab phrase made famous by the poet Dante, “the Master of Those Who Know.” He was also the supreme teacher of all those who wanted to know. The standard way to learn any subject was first to read Aristotle’s own works on it line by line from cover to cover, then pore over the commentaries on the work by Boethius, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas (whose works were rehabilitated when he was canonized in 1323). Finally, the student would write up his own series of quaestiones, or logical debating points, that seemed to arise from the text, and which were themselves reflections on past scholars’ debates on Aristotle.

To understand this it must first be known that the power of making human laws and rights was first and principally in the people,” Ockham wrote in 1328, “and hence the people transferred the power of making the law to the emperor,” or whomever else they choose to exercise authority over them.21 All mortals who are born free have the power voluntarily to put a ruler over themselves, including the Church and the pope. But the final power remained with the people. So having put the pope in office, the people were now free to end “his raging tyranny over the faithful” and push him out.

Socrates had just smiled and shook his head. To break the law, he told Crito, even a law that he knew was unjust, would be wrong. As he told his disciples many times, “one must not do wrong even when one is wronged.”3 By doing wrong, a man did injury to his soul. Doing right, by contrast, makes his soul healthy and strong. A life of virtue is a life without compromise, Socrates believed, in which the goal is perfection according to an eternal standard.

When the emperor Diocletian retired in 305, however, Constantine son of Constantius Chlorus rushed his legions down from Britain to join in the struggle for power. He also displayed a ruthless cunning in working to secure his title. He married the daughter of Diocletian’s co-emperor, Maximian, then in 310 had his father-in-law arrested and strangled.

When the emperor Diocletian retired in 305, however, Constantine son of Constantius Chlorus rushed his legions down from Britain to join in the struggle for power. He also displayed a ruthless cunning in working to secure his title. He married the daughter of Diocletian’s co-emperor, Maximian, then in 310 had his father-in-law arrested and strangled. The next year he allied himself with one rival, Licinius, in order to declare war on the other, Maximian’s son, Maxientius.

The concept of Christendom as a universal (in Greek, katholikos) community of shared values and ideals, living together in peace and harmony, had arrived.19 It comes about not through men obeying nature (as Aristotle would have framed it), but through obeying God. Or rather it will come about someday in the not-too-distant future, when all men everywhere follow His community. Until then arrives, Lactantius admits, men still need laws and a lawmaker, the emperor. But this political power in its new Christian form must be directed toward a higher end than simply maintaining public order and the Pax Romana. Constantine and his successors serve a higher constituency, namely all of humanity. Their task is to create a world fit for Christians to live in, and one that eventually they will take over.

Take natural law away, and we are helpless to do anything or find happiness, even with divine revelation at our elbow (just as some people never bother to open the Gideon Bibles in their hotel rooms). Take up the laws of nature and study them, and suddenly every aspect of existence is bathed with a new significance that eventually our reason traces back to God. Aquinas fully endorsed Aristotle as our guide for grasping and analyzing those laws. Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that to fully know something means understanding its essence; that in turn depends on discovering its purpose by observing its interactions with everything else. This applies to objects both man-made and made by nature.

The Aristotelian and Thomist mind works: it doesn’t just wait around to recover something hidden or something lost. This includes the laws governing nature as understood by science and the laws that govern our own behavior in terms of morality and ethics.

Aquinas demonstrates how the laws of nature could unlock the mysteries of why and how human beings built communities, how and why they framed laws, and how they interacted with one another in society. His analysis of the role of natural law in politics would set off a revolution that had huge consequences for the future.

God’s supreme reason dictates the structure of both the supernatural and the natural order, since both reflect His eternal purpose. Truths about the first are revealed to us in the form of divine law, which means Scripture. Truths about the second are revealed to us through our senses, by means of the laws of nature.

Beyond the actual words of God, and underneath the literal narrative of law, history, and even geography, Origen could discern timeless truths waiting to be pointed out and explained. This way of reading the Bible, called exegesis, would become standard during the Middle Ages. Indeed, the Middle Ages came to interpret just about everything morally, symbolically, or allegorically and sometimes all three.

When we say that the Scriptures are the judge of controversies, we mean it in no other sense than that they are the source of divine right, and the most absolute rule of faith by which all controversies of faith can and should be certainly and perspicuously settled—even as in a republic, the foundations of decisions and of judgments are drawn from the law. So a judge may be taken widely and by metonomy of the adjunct for a normal and not a personal judge. Hence he must not be confounded with the subordinate judge who decides controversies according to the rule of the law and applies the authority of the law to things taken singly. This accords with the Philosopher’s rule, 'The law must govern all, but the magistrates and the state must decide as to individuals' (Aristotle, Politics 4.4.33–34).

When we say that the Scriptures are the judge of controversies, we mean it in no other sense than that they are the source of divine right, and the most absolute rule of faith by which all controversies of faith can and should be certainly and perspicuously settled even as in a republic, the foundations of decisions and of judgments are drawn from the law. So a judge may be taken widely and by metonomy of the adjunct for a normal and not a personal judge. Hence he must not be confounded with the subordinate judge who decides controversies according to the rule of the law and applies the authority of the law to things taken singly. This accords with the Philosopher’s rule, 'The law must govern all, but the magistrates and the state must decide as to individuals' (Aristotle, Politics 4.4.33–34).

It is not always necessary to make a distinction between the judge and the law. The Philosopher confesses that in prescribing universal rights the law has the relation of a judge; but in the particular application in things taken singly, the interpreter of the law performs the office of judge, but a ministerial and subordinate one (Aristotle, Politics 3.6). In this sense, we do not deny that the church is the judge, but still always bound by the Scriptures. As in a republic, the decision of a magistrate is so far valid as it is grounded on the law and agrees with it. Otherwise, if at variance with it, it is invalid and appeal may be made from it. Thus in the church the judgment of pastors can be admitted only so far as it agrees with the Scriptures.