Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/395

379 maturer years, these conclusions come to be accurately expressed in a general form, they are called 'Practical Propositions.' We have already seen that the form of these propositions is immaterial. They may be expressed (1) as statements of fact, (2) as commands [laws], or (3) as 'gerunds.' Notwithstanding this, however, in the main body of the work, Cumberland almost always speaks of Practical Propositions as Laws, and is particularly concerned to show that they are technically such.

Hobbes had insisted that a Law must be clearly promulgated by a competent authority, i.e., by one having power to enforce obedience; and had denied that the so-called Laws of Nature possessed either of these requisites. Cumberland, on the other hand, while accepting Hobbes's definition of a Law, attempts to show that the Laws of Nature are 'Laws' in precisely Hobbes's sense of the word. At the beginning of chapter v, he defines the [general] Law of Nature as "a proposition proposed to the observation of, or impressed upon, the mind with sufficient clearness, by the Nature of Things, from the will of the First Cause, which points out that possible action of a rational agent, which will chiefly promote the common good, and by which only the entire happiness of particular persons can be obtained." The former part of the definition contains the 'precept,' the latter the 'sanction'; and the mind receives the 'impression' of both from the Nature of Things. Neither words nor any arbitrary signs whatever are essential to a Law. Given a knowledge of actions and their consequences, we have all that is needed. With regard to the clearness that is to be looked for in the Laws of Nature, Cumberland says: "That proposition is proposed or imprinted by the objects with sufficient plainness, whose terms and their natural connection are so exposed to the senses and thoughts, by obvious and common experience, that the mind of an adult person, not laboring under any impediment, if it will attend or take notice, may easily observe it." There are such propositions. They are analogous to the