26.1. 1. Idea of this Book.
Men are governed by several kinds of laws; by
the law of nature; by the divine law, which is that of religion; by
ecclesiastical, otherwise called canon law, which is that of religious
polity; by the law of nations, which may be considered as the civil law
of the whole globe, in which sense every nation is a citizen; by the
general political law, which relates to that human wisdom whence all
societies derive their origin; by the particular political law, the
object of which is each society; by the law of conquest founded on this,
that one nation has been willing and able, or has had a right to offer
violence to another; by the civil law of every society, by which a
citizen may defend his possessions and his life against the attacks of
any other citizen; in fine, by domestic law, which proceeds from a
society's being divided into several families, all which have need of a
particular government.
There are therefore different orders of laws, and the sublimity of
human reason consists in perfectly knowing to which of these orders the
things that are to be determined ought to have a principal relation, and
not to throw into confusion those principles which should govern
mankind.
