of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

5. But it has been contended that this phrase about a man who does
wrong _breaking a law_, is only a metaphor and figure of speech,
unless it be used with reference to the enactment of some civil
community. Thus John Austin says that a _natural law_ is a law which
is not, but which he who uses the expression thinks ought to be made.
At this rate _sin_ is not a transgression of any law, except so far as
it happens to be, in the lawyer's sense of the word, a _crime_, or
something punishable in a human court of justice. There will then be
no law but man's law. How then am I _obliged_ to obey man's law? Dr.
Bain answers: "Because, if you disobey, you will be _punished_." But
that punishment will be either just or unjust: if unjust, it
originates no obligation: if just, it presupposes an obligation, as it
presupposes a crime and sin, that is, an obligation violated. There
seems to be nothing left for John Austin but to fall back upon Kant
and his Categorical Imperative, and say that whoever rebels against
the duly constituted authority of the State in which he lives, is a
rebel against the reason that dwells within his own breast, and which
requires him to behave like a citizen. So that ultimately it is not
the State, but his own reason that he has offended; and the State has
no authority over him except what his own reason gives.

6. If this were true, there would be no sin anywhere except what is
called _philosophical sin_, that is, a breach of the dignity of man's
rational nature; and the hardest thing that could be said in
reprobation of a wrongdoer, would be that he had gone against himself,
and against his fellow-men, by outraging reason, the common attribute
of the race.