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all
men, "when they are sincerely and lucidly rational," will regard
as self-evident. But who are the wise and the sincerely and lucidly
rational? In practice the devotees of natural law identify them by
their willingness to say that certain specific moral principles are self–
evident. It is not as though partisans of natural law identify wise or
rational men on the basis of a clear criterion independent of the
specific principles that are said to be self-evident. On the contrary,
to be a wise man according to Aquinas is virtually to be one to whom
the moral principles are self-evident. This is most strikingly illustrated
in Aquinas' statement that "to one who understands that an angel
is not a body, it is self-evident that an angel is not circumscriptively
in a place: but this is not evident to the unlearned, for they cannot
grasp it." By similar reasoning some partisans of natural law must
say that Justice Holmes couldn't possibly have understood what the
term 'man' meant because he did not find the principle "Every man
has a right to live" self-evident. But consider what Holmes said on
the point:
The most fundamental of the supposed pre-existing rights-the right to
life-is sacrificed without a scruple not only in war, but whenever the
interest of society, that is, of the predominant power in the community
is thought to demand it. Whether that interest is the inter'est of mankind
in the long run no one can tell, and as, in any event, to those who do
not think with Kant and Hegel, it is only an interest, the sanctity disap–
pears. I remember a very tender-hearted judge being of the opinion that
closing a hatch to stop a fire and the destruction of cargo was justified
even if it was known that doing so would stifle a man below. It is idle
to illustrate further, because to those who agree with me I am uttering
commonplaces and to those who disagree I am ignoring the necessary
foundations of thought. The a priori men generally call the dissentients
superficial.
It
is
ironic that while Locke believed in the self-evident prin–
ciples of natural law his own attack on the doctrine of innate moral
principles is a most profound statement of the dangers in the doctrine
of natural law. He said:
It was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and
teachers, to make this the principle of principles-that
principles must
not be questioned.
For, having once established this tenet-that there
are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving
