§ 1. LAW has been correctly defined as a rule of human action, prescribed and promulgated by sovereign authority, and enforced by sanction of reward or punishment. But although human actions are the subject-matter about which law is conversant, they are not

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essential to its existence; for the rule is the same whether its application is called forth or not. "If you commit murder or steal you shall be punished," "if you buy a man's lands or goods you shall pay for them," would hold true as rules of law, though no murder or theft were ever committed, and though every debt contracted were faithfully discharged. The rule continues in abstraction and theory, until an act is done on which it can attach, and assume as it were a body and shape. The maxim of jurists and lawyers, "ex facto oritur jus," and such like, must be understood in this sense; and the duty of judicial tribunals, consequently, embraces the investigation of doubtful or disputed facts, as well as the application of the principles of jurisprudence to such as are ascertained (a).

§ 2. Facts which come in question in courts of justice are inquired into and determined in precisely the same way as doubtful or disputed facts are inquired into and determined by mankind in general, except so far as positive law has interposed with artificial rules, to secure impartiality and accuracy of decision, or exclude collateral mischiefs likely to result from the investigation. And this is strictly analogous to the relation between natural and municipal law, of which it has been well observed, "There are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams: and like as waters do take tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to the regions and governments where they are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains" (b). As therefore the study of natural law precedes that of municipal, so an inquiry into the natural resources of the human mind for the investigation of truth should precede an examination of the artificial means devised for its assistance; and the present Introduction will accordingly consist of two Parts devoted to these respective subjects.

§3. The human understanding may be considered in three points of view, namely:- With respect to the sources of our ideas; the objects about which the human mind is conversant; and the intensity of our persuasions as to the truth or falsehood of facts or propositions.

(a) It has been already stated in the Preface, and may as well be here repeated, that this work has been at some points abridged and enlarged in the present edi

tion, but that the arrangement of the author has been entirely preserved.

(b) Bacon on the Advancement of Learning, bk. 2.

§ 4. The best metaphysicians trace all our ideas to the sources of sensation or of reflection (c). There appear to be two kinds of sensation (d): 1. The internal sense, the intuitive perception of our own existence and of what is actually passing in our minds. Of all forms of knowledge or persuasion this is the clearest and most indubitable; and it is the basis of every other. Descartes and Locke, however different their systems in other respects, agree in this. "Cogito, ergo sum," is the celebrated maxim of the former (e): "If I doubt of all other things," says the latter (f), "that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that." "The sceptics," observes Sir Thomas Browne (g), "that affirmed they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought they knew more than all the world besides." And according to a scholastic maxim, "Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu" (h), to which Leibnitz sagaciously adds “nisi ipse intellectus" (i). 2. The external sense, the faculty whereby the perception of the presence of external objects is conveyed to the mind through our outward senses (k). All our other ideas are formed from the above by the operations of "reflection" (1); which may be defined, that faculty through which the mind is supplied with ideas by any sort of act or operation of its own, either on ideas received directly through the senses, or on other ideas, either immediately or mediately traceable to ideas so received.

§ 5. The human mind is conversant about two classes of objects (m). 1. The relations between its ideas (n). Under this head come mathematical and such like truths; where it is obvious that the relations of our ideas to each other may be true, although there be nothing without the mind corresponding to the ideas within it. The properties of an equilateral triangle or circle, for instance, are equally indisputable, whether a perfect equilateral triangle or perfect circle can be found in the universe or not (0); and astronomers

(c) Locke on the Human Understanding, bk. 2, ch. 1, and passim.

(d) Bonnier, Traité des Preuves, §§ 6 and 7, 2d ed. Locke, in loc. cit. § 4, uses "internal sense to signify "reflection." (e) Principia Philosophiæ, pars 1, n. 7. (f) Locke on the Human Understanding, bk. 4, ch. 9, § 3.

(g) Religio Medici, sect. 55.

(h) Encyclop. Britan., 1st Dissertation, Pp. 113, 114.

(i) See his Works, vol. 5, p. 359, Genev. 1768.

(k) Locke, bk. 2, ch. 1; Bonnier, Traité des Preuves, § 8, 2d ed. (1) Locke, bk. 2, ch. 1. (m) Id. bk. 4, ch. 1.

(n) Id. bk. 4, ch. 1, §§ 4, 5, 6.

(0) Locke, bk. 4, ch. 4, § 6; De Morgan on Probabilities, p. 9.