John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (42 page)

8.—To approach nearer, let us leave the consideration of the law of nature in this sense of providence and God’s decree for his government of the great world, and reduce it simply to the law of nature in the lesser world of ourselves. There is in us a double law of nature, sensitive and rational, and the first naturally leads and conduces to the other. Because by the languor and faintness of our nature we lazily rest there and for the most part go no further in our journeys, out of this ordinary disposition Aquinas pronounces that the inclination of our sensitive nature is against the law of reason. This is what the apostle calls the law of the flesh and what he opposes to the law of the spirit (Rom. 7:23).

Although it is possible to sin and to transgress against this sensitive nature, which naturally and lawfully is inclined toward a desirable good, by denying it lawful refreshings and promptings, still I think this is not the law of nature that those who abhor self-homicide complain is violated by that act. They might as well accuse all discipline, all austerity, and all love of martyrdom, which are just as contrary to the law of sensitive nature.

9.—Therefore by the law of nature, if they will mean anything and speak to be understood, they must intend the law of rational nature, which is the light that God has given of his eternal law. It is usually called rectified reason. Now since this law of nature exists only in man and directs him toward piety, religion, and sociableness—so far as it reaches to the preservation of the species and of individuals, there are lively prints of it in beasts—most authors confound it and make it the same with the law of nations. So says Azorius. Sylvius writes that “the law of nature as it concerns only reason is the law of nations.” Therefore, whatever is the law of nations, that is, practiced and accepted, most especially in civilized nations, is also the law of nature, which Artemidorus exemplifies in these two, to serve God and to be overcome by women.

How then shall we accuse idolatry or immolation of being sins against nature? (I will not speak of the first, which like a deluge overflowed the world, and only Canaan was a little ark swimming in it, delivered from utter drowning—but not from storms, leaks, and dangerous weather- beatings.) Immolation of men was so ordinary that “almost every nation, although not barbarous, had received it.” The Druids of France made their divinations from sacrifices of men, and in their wars they foretold the future in the same way. In our times it appears, according to the Spanish reports, that in Hispaniola alone they sacrificed yearly 20,000 children.

10.—However, since it is received from Aquinas that “The nature of every thing is the form by which it is continued, and to act against it is to act against nature,” and since also this form in man is reason, and to act against reason is to sin against nature, what sin can be exempt from the charge that it is a sin against nature, since every sin is against reason? In this sense Lucidus takes the law of nature when he says, “God has written in our hearts such a law of nature as by that we are saved in the coming of Christ.” Thus, every act that does not agree exactly with our religion will be a sin against nature. This will appear evidently from Jeremiah’s words, where God promises as a future blessing that he will write his laws in their hearts, which is the Christian law (Jer. 31:33).

The Christian law and the law of nature (for that is the law written in hearts) must be the same. Sin therefore against nature is not so enormous but that what Navarrus says may stand true, “Many laws both natural and divine bind only to what is pardonable.” (I am not disputing at this time whether or not it is always against reason, for reason and virtue differ exactly as do a closed box of drugs and a plaster or medicine made from them and applied to a particular use and necessity; in the box are not only aromatic medicinals but also many poisons made wholesome by the nature of the disease and the art of the one who administers them.) By the same token, self-homicide is no more against the law of nature than any other sin, not in any of the interpretations that we touched upon above.

This is as much as I determined for this first distinction.

Distinction II

1. There is a lower and narrower interpretation of this law of nature (which could not well be discerned except in light of the foregoing discussion), against which law this sin and very few others seem to be directly bent and opposed. Azorius says, “There are sins peculiarly against nature that are against the natural practice of men,” which he exemplifies in unnatural lusts and in self-homicide. Of the former example Aquinas says, “There are some kinds of lusts that are sins against nature both as they are generally vices and as they are against the natural order of the act of generation.” In the scriptures the sin of misusing sex is called against nature by Saint Paul (Rom. 1:26-27) and once in the Vulgate edition in the Old Testament (Judges 19:24). But, as I intimated once before, this sin against nature is so much abhorred not because its being against nature makes it so abominable but because the knowledge thereof is so domestic, so near, so inward to us that our conscience cannot slumber in it nor dissemble it, as it does in most sins.

Take the example of the Levite in the book of Judges (19:lff.). Let’s assume that those wicked men did seek him for that abominable use— although Josephus says it was only for his wife, and when he himself relates to the people the story of his injury in the next chapter, he complains only that they went about to kill him to enjoy his wife and of no other kind of injury. Although the host who had harbored him tried to dissuade the men, saying, “Only let nothing be done that is against nature,” will any man say that the offer he made to extinguish their furious lust, to expose them to his own daughter, a virgin, and the wife of his guest (which Josephus increases by calling her a Levite and his kinswoman) was a lesser sin than to have given way to their violence, or less against nature, because what they sought was against natural practice?

Is not every voluntary pollution in the genus of sin as much against the law of nature as this was, since it strays and departs from the way and defeats the end of that faculty in us, which is generation? In no interpretation does the violating of the law of nature aggravate the sin. Neither does the scripture call any sin other than disorderly lust by that name. Saint Paul once appeals to the law of nature, when arguing about the covering of the heads of men or women at public prayer. He says, “Judge for yourselves,” and, “Does not nature teach you that if a man has long hair it is a shame?” (I Cor. 11:13-14). Not that this was against that law of nature to which all men are bound, for it was not always so. In most places shavings, cuttings, and pullings of hair are reprehended for delicacy and effeminacy by the satirists and epigrammatists of those times. Until foreign corruption poisoned them, the Romans were always gloriously called unshorn. But, says Calvin, “Because it was at that time received as a custom throughout all Greece to wear short hair, Saint Paul calls it natural.”

So Vegetius says, “From November to March the seas are shut up and unmanageable by the law of nature, which now are tame and manageable enough, and this is also by the law of nature.” And the custom that Saint Paul called natural in Greece was not long natural there. For the bishops of Rome, when they made their canons regulating priest’s shavings, did it because they wanted their priests to differ from the priests of the Greek Church. So Saint Paul’s mentioning the law of nature does not argue from the weight and heinousness of the fault, as our adversaries use it, but he uses it as the nearest, most familiar, and easiest way to lead them to a knowledge of decency and to a departing from scandalous singularity in those public meetings.

2. Although Azorius (as I said) and many others make self-homicide an example of sin in particular against the law of nature, it is only for the reason that self-preservation is of natural law. But that natural law is so general that it applies to beasts more than to us, because they cannot compare degrees of obligation and distinctions of duties and offices, as we can. We know from Aquinas that “some things are natural to the species and other things to the particular person” and that the latter may correct the former. Thus, when Cicero consulted the oracle at Delphi, he had this answer, “Follow your own nature.” Certainly the text, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) is meant there, because if he were alone God’s purpose of multiplying mankind would have been frustrated. Though it would be bad for the conservation of our species in general, it may be very fitting for some particular man to abstain from all such consorting in marriage or with men and to retire into solitude. Some may need Chrysostom’s counsel, “Depart from the highway and transplant yourself in some enclosed ground, for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep its fruit till it is ripe.”

Our safest assurance that we will not be misled by the ambiguity of the term, natural law, and by the perplexed variety of its use in authors will be this from Aquinas: “All the precepts of natural law result in these: flee evil; seek good.” That is to say, act according to reason.

As these precepts are not dispensable by any authority, so they cannot be abolished or obscured, for our hearts will always not only retain but also acknowledge this law. From these precepts are deduced by consequence others that are not always necessary, such as, “Return a deposit.” Although this seems to follow from the first rule (act according to reason), it is not always just. Aquinas says that the lower you go towards particulars the more you depart from the necessity of being bound to it. Ennenckel illustrates it more clearly, “It is natural and binds all always to know that there is a God. From this it is deduced by necessary consequence that God (if he is) must be worshiped and then by likely consequence that he must be worshiped in this or that manner.” So, a little corruptly and adulterately, every sect will call their discipline natural law and enjoin a necessary obedience to it.

While our
substance
of nature (the foundations and principles and first grounds of natural law) may not be changed, yet the
function
of nature (the exercise and application of those principles) and deductions therefrom may and must be changed. A similar danger lies in deducing consequences from the natural law of self-preservation, which does not bind so rigorously, urgently and unlimitedly as to preclude that by the law of nature itself living things may, indeed must, neglect themselves for others. Of this the pelican [believed to have fed its young its own blood] is an instance or emblem. Saint Ambrose, philosophizing divinely in a contemplation of bees, after he has afforded them many other praises, says, “When they find themselves guilty of having broken any of their king’s laws, they injure themselves, condemned to punishment, that they may die from their own wound.” This magnanimity and justice he compares with that of the subjects of the kings of Persia, who in similar cases are their own executioners. Like this natural instinct in beasts, so rectified reason, belonging only in us, instructs us often to prefer public and necessary persons by exposing ourselves to inevitable destruction.

No law is so primary and simple that it does not preconceive a reason upon which it was founded, and hardly any reason is too constant for circumstances to alter it. In that case, a private man is emperor over himself; so a devout man, Dorotheus, interprets those words, “Let us create man in our own image, that is, to be judge in his own cause.” He whose conscience, well-tempered and dispassionate, assures him that the reason of self-preservation ceases for him may also presume that the law ceases too, and may do what otherwise would be against that law.

If it is true that “It belongs to the bishop of Rome to declare, interpret, limit, and distinguish the law of God,” as their authorities teach, which is to declare when the reason of the law ceases, what this author and the canons affirm may be just as true, that he may dispense with that law; he does no more than any man might do with respect to himself, if he could judge as infallibly. Let it be true that no man may at any time do anything against the law of nature; still, Aquinas says, “Dispensation does not work so that I may use it to disobey a law, but so that this law becomes to me no law in the case where the reason of it ceases.” So may any man be bishop and magistrate over himself and dispense with his conscience, where it can appear that the reason—that is, the soul and form—of the law has ceased.

As in oaths and vows, so in the law, the necessity of dispensations proceeds from the fact that a thing which, when universally considered in itself, is profitable and honest, by reason of some particular event becomes either dishonest or hurtful. Neither of these events can fall within the reach or under the commandment of any law. In these exempt and privileged cases, “The privilege is not against universal law but against the universality of law,” according to Ennenckel. It only relieves a person, it does not wound or render infirm a law, any more than I diminish the virtue of light or the dignity of the sun if, to escape its scorching, I allow myself the relief of the shade.

Neither the watchfulness of parliaments nor the descents and indulgences of princes who have consented to laws derogatory to themselves has been able to prejudice the prince’s “notwithstandings,” because prerogative is incomprehensible. It overflows and transcends all law. Just as those canons that boldly and, according to some schoolmen, blasphemously say, “The pope is not allowed,” neither diminish the fulness of his power nor impeach the motions proper to him (as they call them) or his “notwithstanding divine law,” because they are understood always to whisper some just reservation—without just cause, or in matters as they stand—so, whatever law is cast upon the conscience or liberty of man, of which the reason is mutable, is naturally conditioned in that it binds only so long as the reason lives.

Moreover, self-preservation, which we confess to be the foundation of general natural law, is nothing other than a natural affection and desire for good, whether real or apparent. Certainly the motive for martyrdom, although the body perishes, is self-preservation, because thereby out of our election to salvation our best part is advanced. Heaven, which we thus gain, is certainly good, while this life is only probably and possibly good. What Athenagoras says holds well here, “Earthly things and heavenly things so differ as verisimilitude and truth.” And Pico’s is the best description of felicity that I have found, “It is the return of any given thing to its origin.”