378 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )in the ways in which symbols and signs could be employed by elites to form
and manipulate the opinions of the masses. From this beginning came an
image of the politics as, essentially, the pro cess of the molding and control-
ling of masses by elites. Along with this elitist outlook, there was a strongly
irrationalist component to Lasswell’s way of thinking. Th is came partly
from early studies in Freudian psychoanalysis, combined with his insights
into the way in which propaganda could be used to manipulate the thoughts
and actions of people. “[T]he consensus on which order is based,” Lasswell
candidly stated, “is necessarily non- rational.”
Applying this approach to the legal sphere, Lasswell saw international law
as the creation of what he frankly called a “world- myth”—a myth that could,
however, actually become a reality by winning the ac cep tance of the popula-
tion of the world. A world community, he maintained, cannot be created
solely by material means, such as rules on cooperation in waterways, energy
supplies, communications, and trade policy. What is required, in addition, is
“emotionalized and idealized devices.” Th e most urgent quest of those seeking
an orderly world is therefore the search for “world- symbols” that will eff ec-
tively “convey the sense of wholeness and interrelatedness.” Politics is there-
fore, in essence, “the management of symbols and practices related to the
shape and composition of the value pattern of society.” Th ese ideas made
little impact on international lawyers at the time. But that would change in
due course.
Th e Revival of Natural Law
Th e continued grip of positivism in international law meant that, for the
most part, natural law continued, as in the nineteenth century, to play only
a marginal role in international legal thought. But it attracted several nota-
ble adherents. Th e most forthright was a French lawyer named Louis Le
Fur. He came from a Catholic Breton family and studied under Antoine
Pillet. His original specialty was administrative law, but he took up interna-
tional law aft er the war. His allegiance to natural law largely stemmed from
his contacts with Catholic circles, where a revival of Th omist natural-law
ideas had been under way since the late nineteenth century. In 1927, Le Fur
presented his modern theory of natural law in a series of lectures at the
Hague Academy of International Law.