But it may be said to have been _methodized_ by Volney; and in his treatise it is exhibited in a form adapted to popular instruction.[203] There is a striking resemblance between his speculations and those of Mr.Combe.He, too, acknowledges the existence of God; but virtually supersedes His Providence by the substitution of "natural laws." The "law of Nature" is defined as "the constant order by which _God_ governs the world," and is represented as the most universal "rule of action." That law is supposed to be a command or a prohibition to act in certain cases, accompanied with the natural sanction of _reward and punishment_.

After giving several examples of "natural laws," which are all merely _general facts_ or the generalized results of experience, he describes man's relation to these laws almost in the words of Mr.Combe.

"Since all these, and similar facts," he says, "are unchangeable, constant, and regular, there result for man as many true laws to which he must conform, with the express clause of a _penalty attached to their infraction_, or of a benefit attached to their observance; so that if a man shall pretend to see well in the dark, if he acts in opposition to the course of the seasons or the action of the elements, if he pretends to live under water without being drowned, or to touch fire without being burned, or to deprive himself of air without being suffocated, or to drink poison without being destroyed, he receives for each of these infractions of the 'natural laws' a corporeal _punishment_, and one that is proportioned to his offence; while, on the contrary, if he observes and obeys every one of these laws, in their exact and regular relations to him, he will preserve his existence, and make it as happy as it can be." This code of "natural laws" is then described by Volney as possessing no fewer than _ten_ peculiar characteristics, which give it a decided preeminence over every other moral system, whether human or Divine,--as being _primitive, immediate, universal, invariable, evident, reasonable, just, peaceful, beneficial_, and alone _sufficient_.

But it is so only when viewed in connection with the miserably low and meagre system of morals with which it is avowedly associated.

For when morals are described as a mere physical science, founded on man's organization, his interests and passions,--when the treatise, according to its _second_ title, is professedly an attempt to expound the _physical principles of morals_,--and when, in pursuance of this plan, all the principles of Ethics are rigorously reduced to _one_, namely, the principle of self-preservation, which is enforced, as a duty, by the only sanctions of pleasure and pain,--it is not wonderful that, _for such an end_, the "natural laws" might be held sufficient: but it is wonderful that any mind capable of a moment's reflection should not have perceived that, in such a system, the cardinal idea of _Deity_ is altogether omitted, or left unaccounted for, in the case of Man, and that no attempt is made to explain or to account for anything that is properly _moral_ in the government of God.
* * * * * On a review of these speculations, it is important to bear in mind that the existence of natural laws is not necessarily exclusive of a superintending Providence.