ABSTRACT
One antecedent of this analogy is Aristotle's conception of function as the foundation both of natural science and of ethics. The essential function of man both explains what man does, as if biologically, and what man ought to do, the good for man. But for Christian theology the analogy possessed other implications. These retained a certain force throughout Locke's later philosophizing, despite both his rejection of Aristotelianism and his own efforts to stress and to explain the differences between ethics and natural science in respect of their objects and epistemological status. Hence it is appropriate and even, perhaps, obligatory for a commentator on the Essay to discuss physical and moral laws at least sometimes in the same breath. Their conjunction in the chapters following is not intended to encourage goggling at Locke's antiquated otherness, but, more practically, to facilitate the interpretation of what he wrote on each of these distinct topics. The crucial common question concerns the depth and character of Locke's Voluntarism': crudely, are his laws of nature, in whichever sense, arbitrary and contingent dictates of God's will, or are they necessary, flowing from the natures or essences of their objects? Could, for example, just this substance, matter or body, have been created subject to different mechanical laws from those which actually obtain, or did the act of creation, in determining which substance should exist, necessarily and ipso facto determine which laws it should obey? Equally, could God
have willed a different moral law for rational, sensitive creatures from the one he has in fact willed?
