The Law of All Laws

What better way to recharge a quiescent blog than to reflect upon the law of all laws? To begin, let's turn to Richard Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, a work of the English Renaissance. The text will be from Volume One of The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker (Georges Edelen, Editor) (1977) (hereinadter cited as "Works Vol. One"). In The Fyrst Booke (I love the English Renaissance spelling and refuse to modernize it) Hooker states the following:




"All things that are have some operation not violent or casuall. Neither doth any thing ever begin to exercise the same without some foreconceaved ende for which it worketh. And the ende which it worketh for is not obteined, unlesse the worke be also fit to obteine it by. For unto every ende every operation will not serve. That which doth assigne unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of working, the same we tearme a Lawe. So that no certaine end could ever be obteined, unlesse the actions whereby it is attained were regular, that is to say, made suteable fit and correspondent unto their end, by some canon, rule or lawe. Which thing doth first take place in the workes of God himselfe. All things therefore do worke after a sort according to lawe: all other things according to a lawe, whereof some superiours, unto whome they are subject, is author: only the workes and operations of God have him both for their worker, and for the lawe whereby they are wrought."

Works Vol. One, at 58-59.

It would appear that the fundamental law as described by Hooker is the essence of governing oneself. To be truly self governing, one must operate according to one's self generated principles. I say principles instead of principle because only "God is one, or rather verie Onenesse, and meere unitie, having nothing but it selfe in it selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of many things." Works Vol. One, at 59. In other words, we humans are multiplicities, so that our operations could not be the subject of a unified law each human gives to himself or herself. I would suggest, however, that the quest to be operating in accordance with a principle derived from true self is the essence of the human spirit. I would also suggest that what humans describe as reason and revelation is a single object seemingly in two different places because humans in their quest to operate according to an autonomously generated governing principle look at the object from two different vantage points.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, have at me! May those smitten with neuroscience chastise me for not taking into account whatever processes in the brain they would like to posit as constituting the explanation for what I am mindlessly (so to speak) describing as the quest to govern oneself. Let those of a religious nature bring wrath upon me for speaking about reason and revelation as the same object (for that matter, I suspect, the neuroscientists may also bring some wrath (or perhaps some mind altering chemical) upon me for that assertion). And may partisans of Hillary or Barack or John or Mike state their case that only under the watchful eye of their candidate will self government at any level in any form thrive.