In his essay entitled“The Truth AboutTemporal Eternity”

(Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 2,Summer 1994), LyndonH. LaRouche, Jr. identi-fies what he describes asthe “subjective” qualitywhich sparked the Fif-teenth-Century GoldenRenaissance beginningwith the 1439-40 ecu-menical Council of Flo-rence:

The central feature ofthe growth unleashedso uniquely by theGolden Renaissance’sinfluence, has been the establishment of a new kind of politi-cal institutions, the institutions of a system of sovereignnation-state republics, each based upon a literate form of apopular language, and all dedicated, in their internal affairsand relations with other states, to a form of natural lawwhich is traced historically through St. Augustine’s writings,and reaffirmed by Gottfried Leibniz. The Renaissance’s richcomprehension of such natural law also defined the notion

of science in a new way.This new form of

political institution,wherever it emerged,was committed, inclu-sively, to fostering thosebeneficial changes inindividual and nationalpractice which are madeavailable to mankindthrough fundamentalscientific progress. It wasthis coincidence of natur-al law with both the newnotion of a sovereignnation-state republic,and a consistent notionof physical science,which has caused theincrease of the total

human population from the several hundred millions maxi-mum of times prior to A.D. 1400, to over five billions today,and potentially to a technologically-determined, and risinglevel of more than twenty-five billions.

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‘Man Measures His IntellectThrough the Power of His Works’

How Nicolaus of Cusa’s revolution in the Platonic Christianconcept of natural law laid the basis for the Renaissance

invention of the modern nation-state

by William F. Wertz, Jr.

“Abraham’s Sacrifice.”

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Biblical scenes by Rembrandt highlight transformations in man’sunderstanding of natural law.

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Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1994

© 1994 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.

In a more recent essay, “How Bertrand RussellBecame an Evil Man” (Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 3, Fall 1994),LaRouche further identifies the three institutional fea-tures interdependently characteristic of the Renaissance,which Venice and its oligarchical allies have attempted tosuppress:

(1) the Renaissance’s replacement of a system of nestedcovenants and fealties (the imperial form of society) by aform of sovereign nation-state republic based upon a Pla-tonic Christian notion of intelligibility of natural law; (2) theprinciple of the new state’s function of fostering generalizedscientific and related progress in knowledge and improvedpractice; (3) the notion of intelligibility of the laws of theuniverse to persons, through the development of that divinespark of reason which is the aspect of man in the image ofGod: both imago Dei and capax Dei.

The purpose of this study is to show the importance ofre-establishing natural law principles for humanity’s abil-ity to survive the current global crisis. I will demonstratehow the Fifteenth-Century cardinal and scientist Nico-laus of Cusa (1401-64) developed the concept of nationalsovereignty and representative government based upon arevolution in the traditional notion of natural law inher-ited from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, a revo-lution effected by Cusanus’ emphasis upon creative rea-son as the unique and distinguishing characteristicaccording to which man is the “living image of God”(imago viva Dei) and has the capacity to be a “humangod” and a “second creator” (capax Dei).

Whereas St. Thomas Aquinas, in his elaboration ofthe Augustinian concept of natural law, had emphasizedthe deduction of moral precepts from the Decalogue,Nicolaus of Cusa developed and emphasized the intelligi-ble implications of man’s capacity for creativity, the intel-lectual activity that coheres with the loving emotion ofagape¯. It was from this very starting point that Nicolausof Cusa was to found modern physical science in hismathematical and philosophical works, laying the basisin the Golden Renaissance for mankind’s progress overthe next 550 years.

This concept of natural law is coherent with LyndonLaRouche’s physical scientific notion of not-entropy,which contains the necessity of scientific and technologi-cal progress—a necessity expressed in the Biblical injunc-tion to “be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth,” itselfan expression of the commandments to love God andone’s fellow man.

For the purpose of this study I intend to focus, first, onthe concept of natural law as it was first developed by St.Augustine and elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas. Thisschool of natural law can best be described as Platonic

Christian, because, following Plato, it derives natural lawfrom eternal law, based on the idea that since man is cre-ated in the image of God, through the right use of reasonhe can bring his practice into harmony with God’s eternallaw. The discussion will then be broadened by referenceto the writings of Cusanus and of Gottfried WilhelmLeibniz (1646-1716), the universal genius of the Seven-teenth Century.

The Platonic Christian concept of natural law, asdeveloped by Augustine, Aquinas, Cusanus, and Leibniz,is in stark contrast to the Aristotelian concept of naturallaw espoused by such Venetian-allied Enlightenmentwriters on questions of human society, government,national sovereignty, and international law as John Locke(1632-1704) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) of England,Samuel Pufendorf (1632-94) of Germany, and HugoGrotius (1583-1645) of the Netherlands. Although oftenfalsely credited as the initiators of the republican princi-ples upon which the American Revolution was carriedout, this school put forward theories of governmentwhose axioms defined man as an animal, and man’s nat-ural state as that of warfare of each against all—preciselythe oligarchic principles rejected by the AmericanFounding Fathers when they established the first repre-sentative self-government ever put into practice in man’shistory.

St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas,And the Concept of Natural LawAs St. Thomas Aquinas acknowledges in his “Treatiseon Law,” the Christian concept of natural law was firstdeveloped by St. Augustine in his dialogue On the FreeChoice of the Will. In this dialogue, Augustine, who wasa student of Plato, followed the latter in distinguishingbetween the eternal law of God, which is changeless,and man-made laws, which are changeable, but whichare nonetheless subject to the eternal law. Thus Augus-tine writes: “It is from this eternal law that men havederived whatever is just and lawful in the temporallaw.”

In a work entitled “Eighty-three Different Questions,”Augustine writes: “Ideas are the primary forms or thepermanent and immutable reasons of real things andthey are not themselves formed; so they are, as a conse-quence, eternal and ever the same in themselves, and theyare contained in the divine intelligence.” In the SummaTheologica, Aquinas concurs: “Ideas are types existing inthe divine mind, as is clear from Augustine.”

Since man is created in the image of God and all of cre-ation derives its existence from participation in the eternalideas of the Creator, man himself is able to create tempo-

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ral, i.e., man-made laws in harmony with eternal law,through the exercise of the eternal law impressed upon hisown mind.

As Augustine says in On the Free Choice of the Will, theeternal law “is impressed upon our nature.” Thus, “. . .when reason, or mind, or spirit, rules over the irrationalmovements of the soul, then that is in control in manwhich ought to be, by virtue of that law which we foundto be eternal.” Hence, what Augustine means by naturallaw is the eternal law impressed upon our nature as crea-tures endowed with rea-son. Man is acting inharmony with naturallaw if he loves eternalthings rather than tem-poral things. Naturallaw is thus derived frometernal law and is dis-cerned through the rightuse of reason.

The love of temporalthings, i.e., of the crea-ture rather than the Cre-ator, contrary to the rightuse of reason, is a viola-tion of natural law andtherefore leads necessari-ly to unhappiness, bothfor the individual andfor the society which isso ordered. For if allmen loved only eternalthings based on the rightuse of reason, therewould be no need fortemporal (man-made)law—that is, the lawsgoverning the daily lifeof society—as this isrequired only to restrainthe actions of those menwho, contrary to theright use of reason, love temporal things. And thus, tem-poral law

imposes restraint through fear and accomplishes its purposeby constantly harassing the souls of unhappy men forwhose government it has been designed. As long as theyfear to lose these goods, they practice a kind of moderationin their use capable of holding together a society that can beformed from men of this stamp. The law does not punishthe sin committed by loving these things, but the crime oftaking them from others unjustly.

This Augustinian concept of law is elaborated by St.Thomas Aquinas in his “Treatise on Law” in the Sum-ma Theologica. Like Augustine, Aquinas argues thateternal law is the type of the Divine Wisdom.” Aquinascontinues:

Since all things subject to Divine Providence are ruled andmeasured by the eternal law . . ., it is evident that all thingspartake somewhat of the eternal law, insofar as, namely,from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respec-tive inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among

all others, the rationalcreature is subject toDivine Providence inthe most excellentway, insofar as it par-takes of a share ofprovidence, by beingprovident both foritself and for others.Therefore, it has ashare of the EternalReason, by which ithas a natural inclina-tion to its due act andend; and this partici-pation of the eternallaw in the rationalcreature is called thenatural law.

On this basis, Aquinasargues that the light ofnatural reason is “animprint on us of theDivine Light” and that“natural law is nothingelse than the rationalcreature’s participation ofthe eternal law.”

Thus, for bothAugustine and Aquinas,the concept of naturallaw derives from the fact

that man is imago Dei, the image of God, by virtue of hismind or reason. According to Aquinas, “Man is united toGod by his reason, or mind, in which is God’s image.”Moreover, natural law, which is instilled in man’s mindby God so as to be known by him naturally, is derivedfrom participation in eternal law which is the type or theWord of Divine Wisdom. The fact that Aquinas definesnatural law in this way proves that his concept of naturallaw, like Augustine’s, is based on the method of Platorather than that of Aristotle, who rejected the Platonic

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“Adam and Eve.”

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eternal ideas and the Platonic concept of the participationof created nature in those ideas.

Aquinas does admit the existence of other precepts ofnatural law besides reason, however. Man has naturalinclinations, in accordance with the nature which he hasin common with all substances and with other animals.Every substance seeks the preservation of its own beingand all animals are naturally inclined to sexual inter-course, the education of offspring, etc. But since therational soul is the proper form of man, these naturalinclinations are subordinated in man to his rationalinclination to know the truth about God and to live insociety:

All the inclinations of any parts whatsoever of humannature, for example, of the concupiscible and irascible parts,insofar as they are ruled by reason, belong to the naturallaw, and are reduced to one first precept . . ., so that the pre-cepts of the natural law are many in themselves, but arebased on one common foundation.

Like Augustine, Aquinas also distinguishes betweeneternal law, which is changeless, and temporal or humanlaws, which are subject to change. According to Aquinas,“No one can know the eternal law as it is in itself, exceptGod Himself and the blessed who see God in HisEssence. But every rational creature knows it in its reflec-tion, greater or less.” That is, again, temporal or humanlaws are derived from eternal law by means of naturalreason. However, since the eternal law is not known byman as it is in itself, human laws cannot be altogetherunerring. “The human reason cannot have a full partici-pation of the dictate of the Divine Reason, but accordingto its own mode, and imperfectly.”

Ultimately, this distinction between Eternal Lawand Divine Reason on the one side and temporal lawand human reason on the other reflects the Platonicdistinction between God, Who is Absolute Being or theGood per se, and created nature in the realm of Becom-ing, whose nature it is to become increasingly moreGod-like, without ever being able to achieve absoluteperfection.

Nonetheless, since all forms of law derive from eternallaw, temporal law must also be subject to the dictates ofDivine Reason. As Augustine wrote in On the Free Choiceof the Will: “In temporal law there is nothing just andlawful but what man has drawn from the eternal law.”Or Aquinas: “Human law has the nature of law insofaras it partakes of right reason; and it is clear that, in thisrespect, it is derived from the eternal law. But insofar as itdeviates from reason, it is called an unjust law, and hasthe nature not of law but of violence.” Furthermore, just

as Augustine wrote in On the Free Choice of the Will, “Foran unjust law, it seems to me, is no law,” so Aquinas, “Atyrannical law, since it is not in accordance with reason, isnot a law, absolutely speaking, but rather a perversion oflaw . . . .”

Aquinas writes further:

The force of a law depends on the extent of its justice. Nowin human affairs a thing is said to be just from being rightaccording to the rule of reason. But the first rule of reason isthe law of nature . . . . Consequently every human law hasjust so much of the character of law as it is derived from thelaw of nature. But if in any point it differs from the law ofnature, it is no longer a law but a corruption of law.

Thus, even when Aquinas accepts that certain sec-ondary precepts of natural law can be blotted out insofaras reason is hindered by vicious customs and corrupthabits, he nevertheless maintains that “natural law, in itsuniversal character, can in no way be blotted out frommen’s hearts.” In fact, as I develop more fully in Appen-dix I, Aquinas goes so far as to argue that the moral pre-cepts of the Decalogue are valid only because and insofaras they belong to natural law.

The historical limitation reflected in Aquinas’ notionof natural law, however, is that he conceived the issue ofnatural law to lie primarily in the deduction of moralprecepts from the Supreme Reason of God; i.e, theemphasis, as derived from the form of the Decalogue, isprimarily upon what one should not do in order toachieve harmony with the Good. (Appendix II providesexamples of this method for deriving moral preceptsfrom natural law.) However, where Aquinas fails—andthis is where Cusanus brings about a revolution—is toemphasize the positive implications of the law of love.For, in order to accomplish good, as opposed to merely toavoid doing evil, one must go beyond the effort to derivemoral precepts based upon Eternal Reason, to directlyimitating the Mind of God as Creator: one must expresslove toward one’s fellow man by creating the conditionsunder which he too can exercise his creative capacity todo good.

Both Augustine and Aquinas were aware of the dis-tinction Plato makes between deductive logic and cre-ative intellect. In his discussion of the IncarnationAquinas argues that the human intellect alone has acapacity for receiving God capax Dei:

The Son of God is said to have assumed flesh through themedium of the soul, both on account of the order of digni-ty, and the fittingness of the assumption. Now both thesemay be applied to the intellect, which is called the spirit, ifwe compare it with the other parts of the soul. For the soul

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is assumed fittingly only through the fact that it has a capac-ity for God, being in His likeness, which is in respect of themind, which is called the sprit, according to Eph. 4:23: “Berenewed in the spirit of your mind.”

But although Aquinas recognizes that it is the intel-lect, as opposed to other parts of the human soul, whichhas a capacity for God, he does not fully and rigorouslydevelop the difference between inferior “rationality,” ordeductive reason, on the one hand, and superior “intel-lect,” or the capacity for creative reason, on the other.

Cusanus recognized that what makes man the livingimage of God (imago viva Dei), is alone man’s creativeintellect. From this starting point, we will see how he wasable to attain the higher level of hypotheses required toresolve the political problem of the interactive relation-ship between the form of government and law, and thecapacities of the populace. But it is useful to first see howthis problem posed itself to St. Augustine, as presented inBook I of the dialogue On the Free Choice of the Will.

According to Augustine, it is right to enact a law per-mitting a people who esteem their private interest of lessimportance than the public good, to set up for themselvesmagistrates to provide for the public welfare. However, ifthese same people, after having grown corrupt, shouldprefer the individual to the common good, should offertheir vote for sale, and should entrust the government towicked men, it would also be right for some honest manto strip these people of the power to elect public officialsand to subject them to the rule of a few good men or evento that of one man.

According to Augustine, these two man-made lawsmay appear to be contradictory, but they are not; becausetemporal laws may be justly changed in the course oftime, despite the fact that temporal law necessarilyderives its justice from a changeless and eternal lawcalled supreme reason. Thus, “if those people elect offi-cials at one time and at another time do not, each moti-vated by justice, this alteration of the temporal lawderives its character of justice from that eternal lawwhereby it is always just for responsible people to electtheir officials, but not for irresponsible people.”

But if temporal self-government is to be deemed justonly if the people are responsible, the issue is: How canwe guarantee a responsible people? That is, how canwe guarantee that the people will turn their love toeternal things through the use of reason? This ques-tion, so frequently discussed in the Platonic dialogues,was addressed and answered by Nicolaus of Cusa in away that led to the creation of the new political institu-tion of the nation-state in the Europe of the GoldenRenaissance.

Nicolaus of Cusa’s RevolutionIn Natural LawThe key to understanding the revolution effected byNicolaus of Cusa in the traditional notion of natural lawwhich he inherited from St. Augustine and St. ThomasAquinas is, first, the emphasis he places upon creativity asthe distinguishing characteristic of imago Dei and capaxDei, and secondly, the emphasis he places upon man’smoral relationship, as microcosm, to the universe, ormacrocosm, which he describes in effect as not-entropic.

For Nicolaus of Cusa, for man to be imago Dei doesnot merely mean that man has a rational soul capable ofdeducing through the right use of reason moral preceptsas to what he should not do, as in the case of the Deca-logue and its corollaries. Rather, Nicolaus of Cusaexpressly introduces the idea that for man to become anadopted son of God he must ascend in his mind abovemere sense perception and formal-logical rationality tothe level of creative intellect. As microcosm, he must thenact on the basis of his creative intellect, to further developthe potential of the macrocosm, out of love of God andhis fellow man.

In On Beryllus, Cusanus writes:

For just as God is the Creator of real entities and of naturalforms, man is the creator of rational entities and artificialforms. These are nothing other than similitudes of his intel-lect, just as the creatures of God are similitudes of thedivine Intellect. Therefore, man has intellect, which is asimilitude of the divine Intellect, in creating. Therefore, hecreates similitudes of the similitudes of the divine Intellect,so the extrinsic artificial figures are similitudes of intrinsicnatural forms. Hence he measures his intellect through thepower of his works and from this he measures the divineIntellect, as the truth is measured through its image.

In On Conjectures, Cusanus makes a similar statement:

Conjectures must go forth from our minds as the realworld does from infinite divine Reason. For, since thehuman mind, the lofty similitude of God, participates, asfar as it can, in the fecundity of the creatrix nature, it exsertsthe rational from itself, as the image of omnipotent form, inthe similitude of real entities.

In these two passages, Cusanus develops the idea thatwhat makes man imago Dei is that he is a creator. It is hisvery nature to create “rational entities” or “conjectures”or what Lyndon LaRouche has called “thought-objects”or hypotheses. In creating “rational entities” or “conjec-tures,” man, according to Cusanus, is capable of invent-ing something new.

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In The Game of Spheres, Cusanus writes that “the pow-er of the soul is to reason and therefore the power to rea-son is the soul . . . . For this reason the soul is the inventivepower of the arts and of new sciences.” In inventingsomething new, man first creates a “rational entity” andthen decides to create extrinsically that which he has cre-ated in his mind by transforming his thought-object intoan “artificial form,” or a new technology, whether in thearts or the sciences. The capacity to do this is what distin-guishes man from abeast because, asCusanus states, no beasthas such inventive pow-er.

What is more, in say-ing that man “measureshis intellect through thepower of his works,”Cusanus is arguing, asLyndon LaRouche hassince shown, that thetruth of a thought-objectis measured by thedemonstrated increase iteffects in the power ofman’s labor over nature.

In numerous of hiswritings, Cusanus makesabsolutely clear that thislabor power derives notfrom the deductive orsyllogistical power of therational soul, but ratherfrom the creative intel-lect, which is that part ofthe soul which possessescapax Dei.

Directly connected tothis concept of man ascreator is the view mere-ly implicit in St. Augus-tine, but developed expressly by Cusanus, that the uni-verse itself is by nature not-entropic. As I have developedmore extensively in an article entitled “Nicolaus of Cusa’s‘On the Vision of God’ and the Concept of Negentropy,”(Fidelio, Vol. II, No. 4, Winter 1993), Cusanus consideredthe physical universe to be capable of further develop-ment by man’s creative power. Although not co-eternalwith God, because it is created by God out of nothing, theuniverse is nonetheless perpetual. As he writes in OnLearned Ignorance, “the world-machine cannot perish.”

In On Learned Ignorance, Nicolaus of Cusa writes that

“God is the enfolding and the unfolding of all things.”Insofar as man imitates Christ, who as Maximal Reasonis the creator of the world, by himself exercising his cre-ative intellect, man is capable of being the instrument ofthe further unfolding of all things enfolded in God.

In On Learned Ignorance, Cusanus further stipulatesthat the “unfolding” of the universe is

like a number series which progresses sequentially . . . .[W]hether we num-ber upwards ordownwards we takeour beginning fromAbsolute Oneness(which is God)—i.e.,from the Beginning ofall things. Hence,species are as numbersthat come togetherfrom two oppositedirections—[num-bers] that proceedfrom a minimumwhich is maximumand from a maximumto which a minimumis not opposed.

In a later work, “Onthe Quadrature of theCircle,” Cusanus demon-strates, by proving thatthe circle is ontologicallya higher species than apolygon, that this num-ber series is characterizedby successively higherlevels of power or cardi-nality. Cusanus’ discoverythat the relationship ofthe circle to the polygonis not merely irrational, asthe Greeks had thought,

but rather transcendental, set into motion the develop-ment of modern science, including the science of physicaleconomy.

In On Conjectures, Cusanus elaborates on the implica-tions of this discovery for man:

Man is indeed god, but not absolutely, since he is man; he istherefore a human god. Man is also the world, but noteverything contractedly, since he is man. Man is therefore amicrocosm or a human world. The region of humanitytherefore embraces God and the whole world in its humanpotentiality.

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“Joseph Telling His Dreams.”

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From this view of man as microcosm emerges a moreadvanced expression of natural law. According to naturallaw as developed by Cusanus, man must organize humansociety not merely to adhere to certain moral precepts.Humanity as a whole must become increasingly moreChrist-like, which is to say must increase its power overnature by inventing new arts and sciences capable oftransforming the macrocosm so as to advance its ownhuman potentiality.

The failure to do this, to organize human society so asto realize the “intellectual growth” of humanity as medi-ated through the transformation of nature, is itself a vio-lation of natural law. And although the universe as awhole cannot perish, the failure of human society toassume its creative responsibilities in respect to themacrocosm will necessarily result in humanity’s descentinto hell and a concomitant reversal of not-entropy inthat portion of the physical universe most immediatelyaffected by man’s refusal to realize his capax Dei.

It was from the starting point of natural law necessi-tating the “intellectual growth” of humanity that Nico-laus of Cusa was to fashion a concept of man’s self-gov-ernment in his political treatise On Catholic Concordance.

The Concept of the Nation-StateThe concept of the nation-state, which began to emergewith Dante Alighieri’s On World Government (1310-13)and was more fully elaborated in Nicolaus of Cusa’s OnCatholic Concordance (1433), was devised as the mostappropriate vehicle by which man could organize himselfso as to realize his divine potential, as created in theimage of God the Creator, for what Dante referred to as“intellectual growth.”

The first such nation-state was France under Louis XI(1423-83), and it was in the France of Jean Baptiste Col-bert (1619-83) after the Thirty Years War that the worldexperienced the development of the modern form ofnational political economy. The U.S. form of govern-ment, as expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Indepen-dence and the U.S. Constitution, and the American Sys-tem of political economy developed under U.S. TreasurySecretary Alexander Hamilton, derive indirectly fromthe revolution in natural law effected successively byDante and Nicolaus of Cusa and implemented initially inthe France of Louis XI.

Because the U.S. Declaration of Independence repre-sents perhaps the most succinct historical expression ofthe natural law basis of the principle of national sover-eignty, we may introduce the axiomatic principlesinvolved by an examination of its initial four paragraphs.

A. The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God

The first thing that strikes a modern reader of the Decla-ration of Independence is that in it, the Founding Fathersdeclared that they were entitled to assume “separate andequal station” among the powers of the earth based uponthe “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Thus, in thefirst sentence of the Declaration of Independence, theyderive the right of “a people” to “dissolve the politicalbands which have connected them with another” and toestablish themselves as a sovereign nation, having “equalstation” among other sovereign nation-states, directlyfrom God, the Creator, and the natural law which rulesHis creation.

While it is true that the Founding Fathers wereopposed to the creation of a theocracy under a particularestablished religious denomination, it does not followthat the concept of God can be divorced from the foun-dation of the American republic, as was maintained byformer Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, (himself alifelong Ku Klux Klan member and 33rd-degree Scot-tish Rite Freemason), and argued today by the Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-DefamationLeague.

But what did the Founding Fathers mean by the Lawsof Nature?

Historically, there are two contrary concepts of naturallaw. First, the Platonic Christian concept of natural law,presented above, that is based upon the idea that man iscreated in the image of God (imago Dei), and, throughthe right use of his natural reason, man is capable ofbringing his moral practice into harmony with the lawfulordering of the universe created by God.

The contrary, Aristotelian concept of natural lawsees man not in the image of God, but rather as adepraved animal whose mind is a tabula rasa or blankslate. Reduced to such an animal-like state of nature,society is characterized by continuous warfare of eachagainst all. Thus, according to this concept, man formsgovernments by agreeing to subordinate himself to anarbitrary dictatorship, in order to protect himself fromother men. This was the view advocated, for example,by such Seventeenth-Century Enlightenment spokes-men as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, SamuelPufendorf, and Hugo Grotius, and is often identifiedtheologically with the extreme radical Protestant viewthat negates man’s likeness to God subsequent to theFall.

Now, it is absolutely clear from the second paragraphof the Declaration of Independence that the concept ofnatural law upon which the nation is founded is the Pla-tonic Christian concept.

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B. Imago DeiAccording to the Declaration of Independence, it is self-evidently true “that all men are created equal, that theyare endowed by their Creator with certain unalienableRights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pur-suit of Happiness.” Because man is created in the imageof God the Creator, and therefore, like the Creator, isendowed with reason, it is self-evident to him throughthe use of that reason that all men are created equal andare thus sovereign individuals under natural law. It fol-lows, therefore—contrary to the arguments of today’sadvocates of multiculturalism—that there is only onehuman race. Moreover, because all human beings are cre-ated equal and are equally in the image of God, they allhave certain inalienable rights. In other words, naturalreason dictates that all human beings, since they are allequally created in the image of God, are endowed withcertain irreducible rights as sovereign individuals, includ-ing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As Lyndon LaRouche has pointed out, the latter prin-ciple of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi-ness” most clearly associates the U.S. Declaration of Inde-pendence with the Christian Platonism of Gottfried Wil-helm Leibniz, in direct opposition to the Aristoteliandogma of John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property.”

C. Consent of the Governed

In the third paragraph of the Declaration of Indepen-dence, we read that “Governments are instituted amongMen, deriving their just powers from the consent of thegoverned.” This concept, which, as we shall see, was firstput forward by Nicolaus of Cusa, presupposes that, sinceGod is free, all men who are created in His image, are freeby nature. Therefore, governments, to be true to the Lawsof Nature, derive their power from the consent of the peo-ple. This concept of the necessary “consent of the gov-erned” is not, however, contrary to the notion that theauthority of government ultimately derives from God.For, since God’s law is infused in all men, the authority ofgovernment is from God by way of man, namely, by theconsent of man, himself governed by natural reason.Moreover, the powers of government are only “just” to theextent that they derive from the consent of the governedacting in harmony with God’s law infused in their minds.

On this basis, in the fourth paragraph of the Declara-tion of Independence, the Founding Fathers declare thatwhenever any government or any law enacted by a gov-ernment contradicts natural law and becomes destructiveto the inalienable rights of man, “it is the Right of thePeople to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Govern-ment, laying its foundation on such principles and orga-

nizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem mostlikely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Althoughgovernments should not be changed for “light and tran-sient causes,” if a government “evinces a design to reducethem under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is theirduty to throw off such Government, and to provide newGuards for their future security.”

On Catholic Concordance

There is no known documentation that any of theFounding Fathers was directly influenced by reading thepolitical writings of the Fifteenth-Century cardinal Nico-laus of Cusa. Nonetheless, it is well documented thatmany of the Founding Fathers were influenced by thephilosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whose ownwritings were the primary means by which the philoso-phy of Cusanus was introduced into the Americancolonies.

The book which, more than any other, paved the wayphilosophically for the Declaration of Independence, wasOn Catholic Concordance, written by Nicolaus of Cusa inthe year 1433. The reader who is unfamiliar with Nico-laus of Cusa will be shocked to see the extent to whichthe principles in the Declaration of Independence, writ-ten in 1776, are clearly stated almost 350 years earlier byCusanus.

In the following excerpts from On Catholic Concor-dance, Cusanus outlines the principles which later cameto be expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

. . . from the beginning men have been endowed with rea-son which distingishes them from animals. They knowbecause of the exercise of their reason that association andsharing are most useful—indeed necessary for their self-preservation and to achieve the purpose of human exis-tence. Therefore by natural instinct they have joinedtogether and built villages and cities in which to live togeth-er. And if men had not established rules to preserve peace,the corrupt desires of many would have prevented thisunion from improving human life. For this reason citiesarose in which the citizens united and adopted laws withthe common assent of all to preserve unity and harmony,and they established guardians of all these laws with thepower necessary to provide for the public good. It was clearthat by a marvelous and beneficent divine law infused in allmen, they knew that associating together would be mostbeneficial to them and that social life would be maintainedby laws adopted with the common consent of all—or atleast with the consent of the wise and illustrious and theagreement of the others.

All legislation is based on natural law and any law whichcontradicts it cannot be valid. Hence since natural law is

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naturally based on reason, all law is rooted by nature in thereason of man. The wiser and more outstanding men arechosen as rulers by the others to draw up just laws by theclear reason, wisdom, and prudence given them by natureand to rule the others by these laws and to decide contro-versies by the maintenance of peace. From this we concludethat those better endowed with reason are the natural lordsand masters of the others, but not by any coercive law orjudgment imposed on someone against his will. For sinceall are by nature free, every governance, whether it consistsin a written law or is living law in the person of a prince—by which subjects are compelled to abstain from evil deedsand their freedom directed towards the good through fearof punishment—can only come from the agreement andconsent of the subjects. For if by nature men are equal inpower and equally free, the true properly ordered authorityof one common ruler who is their equal in power cannot benaturally established except by the election and consent ofthe others and law is also established by consent.

All legitimate authority arises from elective concordanceand free submission. There is in the people a divine seed byvirtue of their common equal birth and the equal naturalrights of all men so that all authority—which comes fromGod as does man himself—is recognized as divine when itarises from the common consent of the subjects.

Free election based on natural and divine law does not orig-inate from positive law nor from any man upon whose willthe validity of the election depends.

It is the common opinion of all the experts on the subjectthat the Roman people can take the power to make lawsaway from the emperor because he derives his power fromthe people. . . . When they order something contrary to adivine commandment it is evident that the command doesnot share in the divine rulership, and so one should notobey it. . . . No one is obliged to observe an unjust law, andno living person is exempt from a just one.

As can be seen from the above excerpts, Cusanusderives the concept of government by the consent of thegoverned from the self-evident fact that all men are cre-ated equal and have equal natural rights insofar as theyare created in the image of God and are thus endowedwith the capacity for creative reason (capax Dei). Thusgovernment derives its just power from God as mediat-ed through the consent of the people. That Cusanus isnot advocating pure democracy, which, because it is notbased upon reason, tends to devolve towards mob rule,but rather a democratic-republican or representativeform of government, is evident by the fact that thosewho govern must do so in accordance with Divine Rea-son and those who are governed must give their consent

based on the same reason infused in all men and womenby nature.

Supranational Government vs.A Community of Sovereign NationsIn On Catholic Concordance, Cusanus develops the notionof national sovereignty, as did Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)before him in his On World Government. But, since thenation-state did not yet exist, both Dante and Cusanuswere forced to develop it within the context of the existingHoly Roman Empire. From their standpoint, the concep-tion of national sovereignty did not exclude the idea of ahigher form of government, as long as that governmentwas in harmony with the principles of natural law. It wasthus the hope of Dante, Cusanus, and even Leibniz, thatthe Holy Roman Empire could be so reformed as to per-form the role of a world government of last resort, which,because it was above the individual nation-states, couldadjudicate between them and guarantee the peace basedupon its greater adherence to natural law.

However, in order to allow the development of sover-eign nation-states, both Cusanus and Dante insisted upona strict separation of church and state within a trans-formed Holy Roman Empire. In Book III of his OnWorld Government, Dante attacked the so-called “Dona-tion of Constantine,” a spurious Roman Empire docu-ment purporting to grant imperial political power to theChurch. According to Dante, the authority for temporalworld government must come directly, without interme-diary, from God—and not from the Papacy or Churchinstitutions. Similarly, in Book III of On Catholic Concor-dance, Nicolaus of Cusa argues that the Holy RomanEmpire itself comes from God, as mediated through theconsent of the Romans; he also correctly argued, basedupon historical sources, that the “Donation of Constan-tine” was a fraudulent, fictitious document.

By establishing that temporal government does notderive its authority from the Church, but rather fromGod as mediated through the consent of the governed,Cusanus laid the basis for the later emergence of the sov-ereign nation-state and the idea of a family of nation-states subordinate to the principles of natural law.

Although today we would not agree that it werepossible for a world government to reflect adequatelythe principles of natural law—certainly, the UnitedNations does not reflect such principles today—nonetheless, the efforts of Dante, Cusanus, and Leibnizto reform the Holy Roman Empire so as to allow forthe development of national sovereignty are reflectiveof the underlying ideas expressed by Lyndon LaRouche

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in The Science of Christian Economy, that

sovereign nation-state republics are almost perfectly sover-eign. This sovereignty is to be subordinated to nothing butthe universal role of what Christian humanists, such as St.Augustine, Nicolaus of Cusa, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leib-niz, have defined as that natural law fully intelligible to allwho share a developed commitment to the faculty of cre-ative reason.

In On World Government, Dante argues that “the prop-er work of mankind taken as a whole is to exercise con-tinually its entire capacity for intellectual growth, first, intheoretical matters, and, secondarily, as an extension oftheory, in practice.” Dante argues that a world govern-ment is necessary to establish the universal peacerequired to accomplish this purpose. “World-govern-ment . . . must be understood in the sense that it governsmankind on the basis of what all have in common andthat by a common law it leads all toward peace.” Howev-er, Dante recognized that “not every little regulation . . .could come directly from the world-government.”Therefore, he writes that “nations . . . have their owninternal concerns which require special laws.”

In De Vulgari Eloquentia, a book aimed at developingthe vernacular Italian language, Dante argues that, sinceman as distinct from animals is endowed with reasonand communicates through speech, and that since thevernacular is a more natural form of communication,whereas the proliferation of local dialects is an obstacleto such communication, the creation of a literate formof vernacular language common to an entire nation-state (such as Italy) is a necessary precondition for theintellectual growth of a people and for the developmentof its capacity to exercise self-government increasinglymore intelligently. As Lyndon LaRouche emphasizes inThe Science of Christian Economy, the development of aliterate form of popular language common to an entirenation-state is the necessary precondition for the partici-pation of a citizenry in policy deliberations based onnatural law.

In On Catholic Concordance, Nicolaus of Cusa putsgreater emphasis than does Dante on the sovereignty ofthe provinces within the Church or the nations withinthe Empire. In arguing on behalf of sovereignty, Cusanuscites the decrees of the Nicene Council:

. . . the Nicene decrees clearly committed the lower clergyand the bishops to their metropolitans, for they saw it asmost prudent and just that matters should be settled in theareas where they had arisen. . . . The Nicene Council decid-ed that the synod of the province is to decide the things thatconcern each province. The same definition by the NiceneCouncil declares that it is to govern and administer every-

thing. . . . Whatever arises within the province should beheard and finally decided by fellow members of theprovince.

As Lyndon LaRouche concludes in The Science ofChristian Economy,

What we must establish soon upon this planet, is not autopia, but a Concordantia Catholica, a family of sovereignnation-state republics, each and all tolerating only onesupranational authority, natural law, as the classical Christ-ian humanists recognized it. Yet, it is not sufficient thateach, as a sovereign republic, be subject passively to naturallaw. A right reading of that natural law reveals our obliga-tion to co-sponsor certain regional and global cooperativeventures, in addition to our national affairs.

There are several important points that need to bemade based upon the above discussion. First, eventhough we would not today advocate the equivalent ofthe Holy Roman Empire or a world government, thenation-state cannot be conceived of as absolutely sover-eign, since its sovereignty derives from natural lawwhich, as the ordering principle of all of God’s creation, issupranational.

A corresponding concept of world government whichis more appropriate to today’s world, is that all nationsshould be governed by natural law as a supranational prin-ciple. The concept which flows from this is that of a familyof sovereign nation-states which share a community ofprinciple based on natural law. Such a community of sov-ereign nation-states subordinated to common principles ofnatural law will necessarily be at peace with one another.

One consequence of such a community, is that anygovernment which violates the supranational authority ofnatural law and “evinces a design” to reduce its own peo-ple or those of another nation under absolute despotism,may lawfully be abolished. Insofar as it systematicallyabuses the laws of nature, it has abandoned the very basisfor its own claim to sovereignty.

Does this mean that the doctrine of “limited sover-eignty,” cited as the basis for United Nations interven-tions today throughout the world, is valid? No, not at all.In the case that a government systematically abuses theinalienable rights of its citizenry or those of its neighbor,as in the cases of the Pol Pot government in Cambodiawhich committed genocide against its own population,the Hitler government of Nazi Germany, or the currentfascist government of Serbia, that government’s sover-eignty is indeed limited for the very reason that it has vio-lated the supranational authority of natural law.

But, the doctrine of limited sovereignty currentlybeing put forward to justify United Nations interven-tions, in violation of the principle of national sovereign-

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ty, is a different matter, however, because the policies ofthe United Nations are themselves in violation of naturallaw.

As long as the United Nations acts as the enforcementarm for the usurious, “free trade,” genocidal population-reduction and technological-apartheid policies of theInternational Monetary Fund and World Bank, it has noright to “limit” the sovereignty of any of its memberstates. What is more, in carrying out such policies, it itselfhas become a form of government destructive of the endsof man and thereforeshould be eitheraltered or abolishedaccording to the prin-ciples of natural lawexpressed in theAmerican Declara-tion of Independence.

Furthermore, asLaRouche empha-sizes, it is not suffi-cient to conceive ofnational sovereigntyonly negatively, aspassive adherence tonatural law. TheGolden Rule can beexpressed both nega-tively and positively.Negatively, weshould do nothing toanother, except thatwhich we wish doneto us. Positively, weshould do unto oth-ers, as we would havethem do unto us.From the Christianstandpoint, the latter,positive expression ofthe Golden Rule has precedence. It is not enough merelyto forbear from violence against others. Natural lawrequires active benevolence.

Thus, national sovereignty is not autarchical or isola-tionist. It is not based upon self-love narrowly defined.Rather, every nation has a responsibility to participate inand co-sponsor regional and global cooperative effortswith other nations to the mutual benefit of the humanspecies as a whole.

Certainly no nation should become involved in“entangling foreign alliances” in violation of natural law.However, every nation is obligated to participate with

other anti-oligarchical, sovereign nation-state republics inthose projects which defend, maintain, and improve civi-lization as a whole. Thus, such endeavors as the econom-ic development of Eurasia or the economic integration ofthe Ibero-American continent, for example, if they areaccomplished in a manner coherent with natural law, arenot only not antagonistic to national sovereignty, but cancontribute to fulfilling the purpose of the nation-state,both in respect to the development of its own people andin respect to its contribution to the development of its

neighbors.On the other hand,

regional or global pro-grams premised uponusurious so-called freetrade in violation ofnatural law, are antag-onistic to national sov-ereignty and are thekind of “entanglingforeign alliances”which George Wash-ington advised us toeschew.

The positive basis innatural law for theharmonious relation-ship among many sov-ereign nation-states, isthe same as that for theharmonious relation-ship of many sovereignindividual citizens ina single sovereignnation—the Christianexpression of the solu-tion to Plato’s Par-menides paradox of theOne and the Many.Contrary to the En-

lightenment view of Thomas Hobbes and SamuelPufendorf, the solution to this paradox is not the suppres-sion of the Many by the One.

In his On Catholic Concordance, Nicolaus of Cusaaddresses this problem directly. Cusanus argues that,since man is created in the image of God the Creator, thatwhich distinguishes man from an animal is creative rea-son. Every single human being has this capacity to be inthe likeness of his or her Creator (capax Dei). Discordamong men and among nations occurs if men or nationssin by acting in opposition to the divine laws of reasonimprinted upon their minds. Concordance among men

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“The Return of the Prodigal Son.”

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and nations, on the other hand, occurs to the extent thatthe many are in “rational harmony with the Word” orLogos. Such rational harmony with the Word gives rise to“a concordance of all rational creatures.” This concor-dance, because it is based on the very nature of man, doesnot do violence to him, but rather is the sole means bywhich his sovereign individuality can be preserved andhis end achieved. As Cusanus writes: “And this is ourfundamental premise—that the Word is the wisdom ofthe Father, and wisdom is life.” (Proverbs 8)

Such a concept of natural law, of course, runs totallycontrary to the geopolitical notions of “balance of power”and “divide and conquer.” Neither individuals nornations are, from the standpoint of natural law, inherent-ly antagonistic to one another. Any attempt to achieve“peace” by manipulating one individual or nation againstanother will result not in peace, but inevitably in discordand war.

Instead, the concept of natural law leads directly to theissue of the economic development of nations, as themeans by which the capacity shared by all human beingsto be capax Dei may be fostered. Hence, in the Declara-tion of Independence, among the grievances cited by theFounding Fathers to justify their separation from GreatBritain were that King George III had violated the lawsof nature by endeavoring “to prevent the population ofthese States,” “cutting off our Trade with all parts of theworld,” and “imposing Taxes on us without our Con-sent.” Although it is not explicitly cited in the Declara-tion of Independence, it is also well known that thecolonies were forbidden by law from developing manu-factures and were thus restricted to being raw-materialsexporters.

Thus, when the Declaration of Independence arguesthat it is “the Right of the People to . . . institute newGovernment, laying its foundation on such principlesand organizing its powers in such form, as to them shallseem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness . . .and to provide new Guards for their future security,” wemust conclude that the Founding Fathers were assertingthe right of a people to organize its powers in such a wayas to develop the economy of the nation and to expand itspopulation. Only if such powers are invested in the sover-eign nation-state can the government facilitate the “intel-lectual growth” of its citizenry.

In The Science of Christian Economy, LyndonLaRouche identifies this crucial feature of the principle ofnational sovereignty as follows:

The essence of good modern statecraft is the fostering ofsocieties, such as sovereign nation-state republics, thewhich, in turn, ensure the increase of the potential popula-tion-densities per capita of present and future generations of

mankind as a whole, and which societies promote thisresult by the included indispensable, inseparable means ofemphasis upon promoting the development and fruitfulself-expression of that divine spark which is the sovereignindividual’s power of creative reason.

As LaRouche has demonstrated, for a society to con-tinue to survive, it must increase its potential population-density. This necessitates the creation of national govern-mental agencies, including a national bank, capable offostering economic development as mediated throughscientific and technological progress.

The necessity of fostering such progress is a law ofnature, and any government which attempts to suppressthe economic development of a people is in violation ofnatural law and must either alter its course of policy or beabolished.

This concept of natural law, implicit in the Declara-tion of Independence, is enunciated in the Book of Gene-sis. After creating man in His own image, God said: “Befruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and sub-due it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, andover the fowl of the air, and over every living thing thatmoveth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

If we look at the policies which are being imposed bythe International Monetary Fund both on the nations ofthe Third World and the newly liberated former com-munist nations of Eastern Europe and the former SovietUnion, it is immediately apparent that they are in viola-tion of these “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”According to the Declaration of Independence, everynation has the right to “organize its powers,” includingits powers to promote its own economic development, “insuch form, as to them shall seem most likely to effecttheir Safety and Happiness.”

The efforts by the I.M.F. to force nations to disman-tle their public-sector industries, to subject theirnational budgets to I.M.F. austerity conditions, to dis-mantle their militaries, to impose forced sterilizationprograms in order to reduce their populations, and torefuse them high technology necessary to the develop-ment of their peoples are thus, by the standards of ourown Declaration of Independence, a violation of theprinciples of natural law so grave that if we as a peoplewere true to our founding principles, we would notonly not support, but would help to abolish them astyrannical.

Leibniz vs. Pufendorf on Natural LawThose who have wanted to subvert the commitment ofthe U.S. population and its government to natural-lawprinciples, as those are reflected in the Declaration of

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Independence, have spared no effort in rewriting U.S.history. So just as we are now falsely told that theAmerican Revolution was based upon the economictheories of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, we arealso told that the concept of natural law upon which theDeclaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution arebased is the Enlightenment viewpoint of such VenetianParty spokesmen as John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf,Hugo Grotius, and Thomas Hobbes. Although thesefour differ from one another in regard to secondarymatters, they share the same general assumptions aboutman. For purposes ofefficiency, it is neces-sary to present onlythe argument ofSamuel Pufendorf,as refuted by Got-tfried Wilhelm Leib-niz, and certain cru-cial features of theargument of HugoGrotius, to firmlyestablish why thisconcept of naturallaw is not that uponwhich our nationwas founded. Thisapproach is facilitat-ed by the fact thatPufendorf explicitlylocates his theory inthe context of thewritings of the otherthree.

In his On the Dutyof Man and Citizen(1673), Pufendorfbegins by divorcinghis conception of nat-ural law from moraltheology. Having thus separated the laws of nature fromnature’s God, Pufendorf adopts an atheistic concept ofnatural law which defines man as not in the image ofGod. Rather, he takes man as he is after the Fall, “as onewhose nature has been corrupted and thus as an animalseething with evil desires.” He explicitly argues that “itwould be inappropriate to try to deduce natural law fromthe uncorrupted nature of man.” Thus, Pufendorfreduces man to the condition of an animal dominated bytwo passions—self-love and self-preservation—ignoringman’s truer, elevated nature in the image of God. Hewrites:

In common with all living things which have a sense ofthemselves, man holds nothing more dear than himself,he studies in every way to preserve himself, he strives toacquire what seems good to him and to repel what seemsbad to him. This passion is usually so strong that all otherpassions give way before it. And if anyone attempts toattack a man’s safety, he canot fail to repel him, and torepel him so vigorously that hatred and desire for revengeusually last long after he has beaten off the attack.

Therefore, according to Pufendorf, man concludesthat “in order to be safe, it is necessary for him to be

sociable,” that is, toescape the state ofnature in which eachis constantly at warwith all, man mustsubordinate his libertyto the will of a superi-or. “In becoming a citi-zen, a man loses hisnatural liberty andsubjects himself to anauthority whose pow-ers include the right oflife and death.”

Pufendorf contin-ues: “In a state allhave subjected theirown will to the will ofthose in power inmatters affecting thestate’s security, so thatthey are willing to dowhatever the rulerswish.”

In the chapter, “Onthe Characteristics ofCivil Authority,” heelaborates on his con-cept of sovereignty:

Every authority by which a state in its entirety is ruled,whatever the form of government, has the characteristic ofsupremacy. That is, its exercise is not dependent on a supe-rior; it acts by its own will and judgment; its actions maynot be nullified by anyone on the ground of superiority.Hence it is that authority in this sense is unaccountable . . . .Conformably with this, the sovereign authority is superiorto human and civil laws as such, and thus not directlybound by them.

Moreover, according to Pufendorf, the people do nothave the right to rebel:

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“Christ and the Woman of Samaria, among Ruins.”

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Sovereign authority, finally, has also its own particularsanctity. It is therefore morally wrong to the citizens toresist its legitimate commands. But beyond this even itsseverity must be patiently borne by citizens. . . . And evenwhen it has threatened them with the most atrociousinjuries, individuals will protect themselves by flight orendure any injury or damage rather than draw theirswords against one who remains the father of their country,however harsh he may be.

In respect to foreign policy, since the states are in thestate of nature with each other, they are thereby con-strained to act defensively, not benevolently, on the expec-tation that friendly states may become enemies, and thatpeace may become war. This argument leads necessarilyto geopolitical balance of power policies and to a perpetu-al state of warfare.

Pufendorf derives his notion of “sociality” as thesource of natural law from Grotius. Grotius argues inThe Law of War and Peace that “the source of all law” isthe “care to preserve society.” Grotius explicitly identifiesthis trait with what the Stoics call “friendliness.”

Grotius then argues that “what we have just saidwould have validity, even if we granted what cannot begranted without great wickedness, that there is no God,or that he has no care for human affairs.” Even thoughGrotius states that “the opposite belief has been instilledin us, partly by our reason, partly by an unbroken tradi-tion, confirmed by many proofs and miracles attestedthrough every age,” in making this statement, he hasnonetheless argued that it is not necessary to presupposethe existence of God as the basis for natural law.

In fact, Grotius does not define the first general princi-ples of natural law as love of God and of our fellow man,but rather, following the Stoics, he argues that the firstgeneral principles are self-preservation and the desire forsociety. As a result, he expressly distinguishes betweenthe New Testament law of love, and the law of nature.This leads him to the view that in joining society, men“submitted themselves to some other man or men,” andpromised to “conform to any decision taken . . . by thoseto whom authority had been committed.”

Having effectively divorced natural law from moraltheology, Grotius then reduces natural law to a form ofcustomary law. For he writes that whenever many men

at different times and in different places declare the samething to be true, their unanimity must be ascribed to a uni-versal cause, which, as we inquire into it, can be nothingelse than a correct inference from the principles of nature,or some general consensus. The former means a law ofnature, the latter a law of nations.

The effect of inferring natural law inductively, pri-

marily from examples from Greek and Roman history, isto separate natural law from moral theology. Moreover,deriving the law of nations by consensus denies thesupranational authority of natural law.

On the question of sovereignty, Grotius, likePufendorf, argues that the ruler’s acts are “not subject tothe legal control of anyone else, and cannot be rescindedat the pleasure of another human will.” Moreover, heexplicitly rejects “the opinion of those who maintain thateverywhere and without exception, sovereignty lies in thepeople” and argues that “it is not universally true that allgovernment was created for the benefit of the governed.”

Leibniz, in his Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf,after first criticizing Pufendorf for divorcing natural lawfrom moral theology, further criticizes him for locatingnatural law not “in the nature of things and in the pre-cepts of right reason which conform to it, which emanatefrom the divine understanding, but . . . in the commandof a superior.”

This issue, which Leibniz has identified, most unique-ly differentiates the true concept of natural law uponwhich our nation was founded from the one which hassubverted our institutions, to the extent it has beenaccepted as valid.

To better examine the implications of Pufendorf’slocation of natural law in the command of a superior,Leibniz asks whether natural law is based upon the arbi-trary will of God or derives from the divine idea of jus-tice which informs God’s will? If the former is true, thenGod would be a tyrant and his creation would have nonecessary lawful order discoverable by the mind of man.But this is absurd.

As Nicolaus of Cusa argues in respect to the Gospel ofJohn, God the Father was never without his consubstan-tial Son, the Word or Reason, through which all thingsare created: “In the beginning was the Word, and theWord was with God, and the Word was God. He was inthe beginning with God. All things came to be throughHim, and without Him nothing came to be.”

Leibniz concludes by summarizing his own view ofnatural law in opposition to that of Pufendorf:

The end of natural law is the good of those who observe it;its object, all that which concerns others and is in our pow-er; finally, its efficient cause in us is the light of eternal rea-son, kindled in our minds by the divinity.

Conclusion

Ironically, as Lyndon LaRouche has stressed, theadvances that man has achieved in the last five-and-a-half centuries, and his potential to advance further in the

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next century, derive from the Platonic Christian notion ofnatural law as that was developed by Nicolaus of Cusaand reaffirmed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, especiallyas that notion found expression in the founding of theUnited States of America. However, unfortunately, thisconcept of natural law, although still the motor force ofall progress made by mankind, is no longer hegemonicculturally. Rather, the opposing fraudulent Aristotelianconcept of the Venetian Party’s Enlightenment hasbecome culturally dominant.

As LaRouche wrote at the conclusion of his essay,“How Bertrand Russell Became an Evil Man,”

Five-and-a-half centuries after the Council of Florence,Venice and its outgrowth, the “Venetian Party,” has cometo dominate not only the financial institutions of the world,and most of the political ones, but also dominates the insti-tutions of science, arts, and education generally. Under thisreign, the world has been brought to the verge of a generalcollapse of an apocalyptic quality like that of the FourteenthCentury, but much worse. Time is running out rapidly.

The unprecedented task for mankind at this momentof world history is to effect a renaissance, such as that ofthe Fifteenth Century, without having to go through aDark Age like that of the Fourteenth. Lyndon LaRouchehas referred to this task as “building a bridge from Hellto Purgatory.” If we are to build such a bridge in the faceof the current ongoing collapse, it will require that weeffect a “reverse paradigm shift” in the immediate periodahead, through a revival of the concept of natural law asthe Golden Renaissance and the founding of the Ameri-can Republic have bequeathed it to us.

A P P E N D I X I

Natural Law and ScriptureAs opposed to Aristotelian religious fundamentalists,who interpret Scripture literally, as if isolated judicialprecepts contained within it were eternally binding, andwho counterpose arbitrary scriptural authority to science,the Platonic Christian tradition of St. Augustine, St.Thomas Aquinas, Nicolaus of Cusa, and Gottfried Wil-helm Leibniz regards Scripture as a necessary, divinelyinspired aid to human reason, which must, however, beinterpreted from the standpoint of the reason God hasimprinted upon our minds.

Thus, for example, Aquinas insists that the precepts ofthe Old Testament (Old Law) are only valid insofar asthey reflect natural reason and the law of love. AsAquinas wrote: “The Old Law showed forth the preceptsof the natural law, and added certain precepts of its own.

Accordingly, as to those precepts of the natural law con-tained in the Old Law all were bound to observe the OldLaw; not because they belonged to the Old Law, butbecause they belonged to the natural law.”

In making this statement, Aquinas points to the factthat the Apostle Paul (Rom. 2:14) argues that “the Gen-tiles, who have not the Law, do by nature those thingsthat are of the Law.” In other words, the moral principlescontained in the Decalogue of the Old Law belong to thelaw of nature as instilled in the mind of man. Therefore,since morality is in accordance with the right use of rea-son, even though the Old Law was not revealed to theGentiles, through the exercise of reason all men are capa-ble of discovering those universally valid moral preceptsrevealed in the Divine Law.

In the New Testament of the Bible, when Christ isasked, “Which commandment in the law is the great-est?” he answers, “You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all yourmind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor asyourself. The whole law and the prophets depend onthese two commandments.” (Matt. 22:37-40) (Cf. Dt 6:5and Lv 19:18)

What Thomas Aquinas argues in his “Treatise onLaw” is that, although these two principles are notexplicitly contained in the Decalogue, they are “the firstgeneral principles of the natural law, and are self-evidentto human reason, either through nature or through faith.Therefore all the precepts of the Decalogue are referredto these as conclusions to general principles.”

This same conception is put forth by Nicolaus of Cusain his dialogue On the Peace of Faith as the very basis forestablishing peace among all nations. What Cusanus hasthe Apostle Paul say in the dialogue is the following:

The divine commandments are very brief and are all wellknown and common in every nation, for the light thatreveals them to us is created along with the rational soul.For within us God says to love Him, from whom wereceived being, and to do nothing to another, except thatwhich we wish done to us. Love is therefore the fulfillmentof the law of God and all laws are reduced to this.

Aquinas also writes, “the precepts of the Decalogue canbe reduced to the precepts of charity.”

Now, according to Aquinas,

Since the Decalogue is from God, its moral precepts as tothe notion of justice which they contain, are unchangeable;but as to any determination by application to individualactions, for instance that this or that be murder, theft, oradultery, or not—in this point they admit of change; some-times by Divine authority alone; sometimes also by human

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authority, namely, in such matters as are subject to humanjurisdiction . . . .

However, such change must be based not upon the arbi-trary will of either Divine or human authority, but ratherupon reason.

For example, argues Aquinas, citing Augustine’s Onthe Free Choice of the Will,

The slaying of a man is forbidden in the Decalogue insofaras it bears the character of something undue, for in thissense the precept contains the very essence of justice.Human law cannot make it lawful for a man to be slainunduly. But it is not undue for evil-doers or foes of thecommonwealth to be slain . . . .

For, to argue otherwise would be to say that God Him-self violated the moral precepts of the Decalogue andcommanded man to violate the same. The apparent con-tradiction between the moral precept of the Decaloguecommanding “Thou shalt not kill,” and the slaying of amurderer by the state or of an enemy in warfare, can onlybe resolved in the way suggested by Augustine andAquinas, i.e., by reference to the notion of justice.

That does not mean, however, that the punishmentsspecified in the Old Law, such as the death penalty, mustbe applied today as a fundamentalist, literal interpreta-tion of the Bible would suggest. The determination ofjustice must take into consideration the moral develop-ment or perfection of man as a process over time; and jus-tice must be tempered by love.

Hence, according to Aquinas, the moral precepts ofthe Decalogue are unchangeable and belong to naturallaw, but judicial precepts of the Old Law which are notderived from natural reason, lose their binding force:“The obligation of observing justice is indeed perpetual.But the determination of those things that are justaccording to human or Divine institution must be differ-ent, according to the different states of mankind.” Thus,the responsibility for interpreting the revealed (Divine)Law, rests within man’s exercise of the reason whichmakes him imago Dei.

A P P E N D I X I I

Moral Precepts: Natural Law andThe Sermon on the Mount

From a Christian standpoint, natural law is expressedmost perfectly in the counsels of Christ in his Sermon onthe Mount, for the reason that natural law is the partici-pation of human reason in eternal law, which is the typeof Divine Wisdom. Christ himself, who is the Word-

become-flesh, is the highest expression of such participa-tion. In On Learned Ignorance, Nicolaus of Cusa writesthat “Christ is the center and the circumference of intel-lectual nature” and that “Christ, the head and source ofevery rational creature, is Maximal Reason, from whichall reason derives.”

Despite the fact that many of Christ’s counsels wouldseem to run against what is commonly defined as humannature, man is true to his real nature, as in the livingimage of God, only to the extent that he subordinates hiswill to the Supreme Reason of God. Natural reason, aid-ed by Divine Law, tells us that we should love our Cre-ator and love our neighbor as ourselves, and that there-fore we should do good to our enemies and forgive thosewho injure us.

Since reason tells us that we should hate the sin andnot the sinner, and since we are all sinners and Christcame to save sinners, not the righteous, it should be clearthat from the standpoint of natural law, it were morallypreferable to correct evil in such a way as to not shed theblood of another human being.

However, under extreme necessity, it is not contrary tolove of God and love of one’s neighbor to use forceagainst evil, if it is done for the common good and for thegood of even those with whom one must fight. Underthose conditions, force is employed not out of hatred, butrather out of love for one’s enemy, not for the sake ofvengeance, but to defend the public good and to liberateeven one’s enemy from a condition that violates theimage of God within him.

In his commentary On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,Augustine argues that

A punishment that is designed for the purpose of correctionis not hereby forbidden; for that very punishment is anexercise of mercy, and is not incompatible with the firmresolve by which we are ready to suffer even furtherinjuries from a man whose amendment we desire. But noone is fit for the task of inflicting such punishment unless—by the greatness of his love—he has overcome the hate bywhich those who seek to avenge themselves are usuallyenraged . . . . The moral is that, when a man inflicts a penal-ty, his intention ought to be to make the offender happy bya correction, rather than unhappy by a punishment; andthat if necessity demands it—whether he possesses or lacksthe authority to restrain the offender—he ought to be readyat all events to tolerate calmly even further injuries done tohim by a man whose correction he is seeking to bringabout.

This was the case in the American Revolution and inthe U.S. Civil War, both of which were fought as a lastresort against tyranny and the institution of slavery.Nonetheless, as necessary as such wars may have become,

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the best way to avoid them before the fact, and to ensurethat the conclusion of one war does not sow the seeds foranother, is to heed Christ’s counsel in the Sermon on theMount and strive to be perfect just as our heavenlyFather is perfect.

• Thus, we must oppose imposition of the death penal-ty as being in violation of the principle of charity,which underlies the concept of natural law. Eventhough both Augustine and Aquinas accept capitalpunishment, clearly, inmost of the world today,imprisonment is analternative which guar-antees the public safetyand therefore the deathpenalty cannot be justi-fied as a last resort. Thisargument is bolstered byapplication of the con-cept of natural lawdeveloped by Augustineand Aquinas, accordingto which, since no onecan know the eternallaw as it is in itself,human laws cannot bealtogether unerring(although they can andmust be brought intoincreasingly less imper-fect harmony with theGood itself through theuse of the natural reasonimpressed upon us).

• As the ongoing Serbianmilitary aggressionagainst Bosnia presentsthe case, a defensive warto prevent genocide clear-ly meets the requirementsof a just war from the standpoint of natural law. How-ever, we should not forget that the underlying cause ofwar in the world today is the lust on the part of theVenetian oligarchy for a Malthusian one-world order,and that therefore the most effective way to eliminatethe potential for war is to mobilize to replace thoseMalthusian economic policies with a policy of economicdevelopment which reflects love of God and love ofone’s neighbor.

• As the U.S. Declaration of Independence empha-sizes, the right to rebel against tyranny is consistent

with natural law. Where possible, however—as wasthe case in the peaceful revolutions of 1989 in the for-mer Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, whateverother limitations those revolutions had insofar as theywere incomplete—it is preferable that tyrannicalgovernments be overthrown without resort to vio-lence. But, as we see in the case of these peaceful rev-olutions, the task now is to bring the economies ofthe nations liberated from communism into harmony

with natural law, ratherthan subjecting them tothe violence of the liber-al capitalism of theI.M.F. and internationalfinancial institutions.For the liberal capital-ism of the Venetian oli-garchy is nothing butthe modern form ofusury, as LyndonLaRouche has arguedmost recently in hisessay, “The TruthAbout Temporal Eter-nity”:

No Christian, nor any otherfollower of Moses, can toler-ate the philosophy of JohnLocke or the ‘free trade’ dog-ma of the slave-trading, opi-um-trading British EastIndia Company’s hired apol-ogist, Adam Smith. To pro-mote the practice of ‘freetrade’ is to break every partof the Decalogue into littlepieces, and, having done that,to spit in the Face of God.This is no mere opinion, noris it exaggerated; it is prov-ably a scientific certitude

more relentless than the laws of planetary motion of our solarsystem. It is long past the time someone ought to have said thatstraight out, loud and clear.

For the core of Adam Smith’s dogma is a radical Aris-totelian rejection of the law of love and its replacementby the law of animal lust for temporal gain. Nor is thismerely a matter of personal immorality; as LaRouchehas stressed, a monetary system based upon usury isone in which sooner or later the economic host will bedevoured by the usurious parasite, resulting in a homi-cidal collapse of society as a whole.

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“Christ at Emmaus.”

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