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Kepler discovered the laws according to which the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, Newton the law of gravitation by which all bodies attract in direct proportion to their mass and inversely as to the square of the distance between them.The laws which govern light, heat, and electricity are known today.The natural tendency to a determinate manner of activity on the part of creatures that have neither the power to think nor to will can be called law for a twofold reason : first, because it forms the decisive reason and the controlling guide for the activities of such creatures, and consequently as regards irrational creatures fulfills the task which devolves upon law in the strict sense as regards rational beings; and further, because it is the expression and the effect of a rational lawgiving will.Law is a principle of regulation and must, like every regulation, be traced back to a thinking and willing being.Law is the criterion of reasonable action and must, therefore, itself be reasonable.A law not in accordance with reason is a contradiction.
This is, however, an inexact and exaggerated mode of expression.
This thinking and willing being is the Creator and Regulator of all things, God Himself.
It may be said that the natural forces and tendencies placed in the nature of creatures, are themselves the law, the permanent expression of the will of the Eternal Observer Who influences creatures and guides them to their appointed ends, not by merely external influences but by their innate inclinations and impulses. In a stricter and more exact sense law is spoken of only in reference to free beings endowed with reason.
But even in this sense the expression law is used sometimes with a wider, sometimes with a more restricted meaning.
By law are at times understood all authoritative standards of the action of free, rational beings.