by its prohibitions it restrains them from doing wrong ... To invalidate
this law by human legislation is never morally right, nor is it permissible
ever to restrict its operation, and to annul it is impossible. Neither the
Senate nor the people can absolve us from obligation to obey this law,
and it requires no Sextus Aleius to expound or 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 people; 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. The man who will not
obey it will abandon his better self, and, in denying the true nature of a
man, will thereby suffer the severest of penalties, though he has
escaped all the other consequences which men call punishment.(27)XIII. Modern Man in Search of LightAfter centuries of unsuccessful experiments with man-made
laws, modern man is still in search of the kind of laws which Cicero
had so vehemently yearned for. The problem is where to find such
laws – they are eternal, unchangeable, immutable, inviolable-
applicable to all and at all times. The source would have to be supra-
human, i.e., the laws given by God Himself. The West had naturally
to seek the help of religion to ascertain such laws. They tried
Christianity, but there was no response. Christianity has no laws to
give, and it is all other-worldly. In the words of Joad:
Christianity places man's true life not in this world but in the next.
While the next world is wholly good this world is conceived to be, at
least to some extent, evil; while the next life is eternal, life on earth is
transitory. For man's life hereafter, this, his present existence, is to be
regarded as a preparation and a training; and its excellence consists in
the thoroughness and efficiency with which the training is carried out.
Nothing on the earth is wholly and absolutely good, and such goods as
earthly life contains are good only as a means to greater goods which
are promised hereafter.(28)
The Spanish scholar, Dr. Falta de Gracia, writes:
The notion of justice is as entirely foreign to the spirit of Christianity
as is that of intellectual honesty. It lies wholly outside the field of its
ethical vision.(29)
Prof. A.N. Whitehead writes:
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts
Political System 226