or all things, or as many things as belong to a particular species, act in
one and the same fixed and definite manner, which manner depends either on
natural necessity or on human decree. (2) A law which depends on natural
necessity is one which necessarily follows from the nature, or from the
definition of the thing in question; a law which depends on human decree,
and which is more correctly called an ordinance, is one which men have laid
down for themselves and others in order to live more safely or conveniently,
or from some similar reason.

(3) For example, the law that all bodies impinging on lesser bodies, lose as
much of their own motion as they communicate to the latter is a universal
law of all bodies, and depends on natural necessity. (4) So, too, the law
that a man in remembering one thing, straightway remembers another either
like it, or which he had perceived simultaneously with it, is a law which
necessarily follows from the nature of man. (5) But the law that men must
yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat of their natural right, and that
they bind themselves to live in a certain way, depends on human decree. (6)
Now, though I freely admit that all things are predetermined by universal
natural laws to exist and operate in a given, fixed, and definite
manner, I still assert that the laws I have just mentioned depend on human
decree.

(1.) (7) Because man, in so far as he is a part of nature, constitutes a
part of the power of nature. (8) Whatever, therefore, follows necessarily
from the necessity of human nature (that is, from nature herself, in so far
as we conceive of her as acting through man) follows, even though it be
necessarily, from human power. (9) Hence the sanction of such laws may very
well be said to depend on man's decree, for it principally depends on the
power of the human mind; so that the human mind in respect to its perception
of things as true and false, can readily be conceived as without such laws,