5000 Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen Read Free Book Online Page B

affairs.
       Cicero's compelling honesty led him to conclude that once the reality of the Creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice, and human relations is in terms of the laws which the Supreme Creator has already established. The Creator's order of things is called Natural Law.
       A fundamental presupposition of Natural Law is that man's reasoning power is a special dispensation of the Creator and is closely akin to the rational or reasoning power of the Creator himself. In other words, man shares with his Creator this quality of utilizing a rational approach to solving problems, and the reasoning of the mind will generally lead to common-sense conclusions based on what Jefferson called "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God" (The Declaration of Independence).
       Let us now examine the major precepts of Natural Law which so profoundly impressed the Founding Fathers.

    Natural Law Is Eternal and Universal
       First of all, Cicero defines Natural Law as "true law." Then he says:
       "True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.... It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment." 22
       In these few lines the student encounters concepts which were repeated by the American Founders a thousand times. The Law of Nature or Nature's God is eternal in its basic goodness; it is universal in its application. It is a code of "right reason" from the Creator himself. It cannot be altered. It cannot be repealed. It cannot be abandoned by legislators or the people themselves, even though they may pretend to do so. In Natural Law we are dealing with factors of absolute reality. It is basic in its principles, comprehensible to the human mind, and totally correct and morally right in its general operation.
       To the Founding Fathers as well as to Blackstone, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Cicero, this was a monumental discovery.

    The Divine Gift of Reason
       To Cicero it was an obvious and remarkable thing that man had been endowed with a rich quality of mind that does not exist among other forms of life except in the most minuscule proportions. Between man and other creatures there is a gigantic gap insofar as mental processes are concerned. Cicero as well as the Founders viewed this as a special, divine endowment from the Creator. Cicero wrote:
       "The animal which we call man, endowed with foresight and quick intelligence, complex, keen, possessing memory, full of reason and prudence, has been given a certain distinguished status by the Supreme God who created him; for he is the only one among so many different kinds and varieties of living beings who has a share in reason and thought, while all the rest are deprived of it. But what is more divine, I will not say in man only, but in all heaven and earth, than reason? And reason, when it is full grown and perfected, is rightly called wisdom. Therefore, since there is nothing better than reason, and since it exists both in man and God, the first common possession of man and God is reason.
       "But those who have reason in common must also have right reason in common. And since right