William Blackstone (Part 1) - Laws come from Nature

William Blackstone (1723 - 80) was a eminent English jurist. In the introduction to his "Commentaries on the Laws of England", he briefly speaks of the philosophy underlying law. He appears to be influenced by John Locke. On reading his description of the philosophy of law, I imagine a man struggling toward the ideas later expressed in Rand's "The Objectivist Ethics" essay, but not getting there. Instead, he wanders back into conventional wisdom.

Here's a synopsis of these two pages.

Blackstone has a deist notion of God: He created the universe, and set things in motion; and, that's about it. This is not an interfering God. This is not a God who will change things to help us out. being perfect, He won't even change his own plans. To us humans, then, what is relevant is the will of this God as expressed in his design of the universe. Blackstone sums it up thus: "This will of his maker is called the law of nature". The best way to read the commentary is to keep that one statement in mind as the encapsulation of Blackstone's view. Whenever he speaks of God's will, he is talking about the laws of nature.

Blackstone traces natural law from inanimate objects, to animals, and then to the "noblest of all ... beings". Given the laws of nature, other laws are not arbitrary. Inanimate objects react within certain immutable laws of nature. Lower animals follow the laws of nature, too. They cannot think or choose in the way humans can. Yet, unlike inanimate objects, their actions are animated by an end: their own subsistence. " ..., such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as the creature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience." Reminds me of Rand identifying life as the end behind all goal-directed action.

I'll describe how Blackstone proceeds to humans, in another post. For now, here is the text that I have described above:

Introduction: Section 2

… when the Supreme being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. When he put that matter into motion, he established certain laws of motion, to which all movable bodies must conform, And, to descend from the greatest operation to the smallest, when a workman forms a clock, or other piece of mechanism, he establishes at his own pleasure certain arbitrary laws for its direction; as that the hand shall describe a certain space in a given time; to which law as long as the work conforms, so long it continues in perfection, and answers the end of its formation,

If we farther advance, from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life, we shall find them still governed by laws; more numerous indeed, but equally fixed and invariable. The whole progress of plants, from feed to the root, and from thence to the feed again; --- the method of animal nutrition, digestion, secretion, and other branches of vital economy; --- are not left to chance, or the will of the creature itself, but are performed in a wondrous involuntary manner, and guided by unerring rules laid down by the great author.

This then is the general signification of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being; and in those creatures that have neither the power to think, nor the will, such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as the creature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience. But, laws, in their more confined sense, and in which it is our present business to consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action of conduct: that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and freewill, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of behavior.

Original text via Posner Memorial Collection (CMU). Audio-recording at Librivox.