ABSTRACT
The expression natural rights played so conspicuous a part in the politics and political philosophy of last century, especially at the time of the Encyclopedists and Physiocrats and Adam Smith, that a few words must be added here on the connection between natural rights, law of nature, and state of nature. It is important not only to know the ambiguities and errors1 associated with these terms, but the sense (if there be such) in which they may still safely be used. The commonest use of “natural” is probably in the sense of “instinctive.” Macdu “wants the natural touch,” the instinct of an animal to ght for its young. Hamlet’s father considered his own murder to be “most foul, strange, and unnatural,” because against the instincts of kindred. This sense throws no light on “natural rights,” for instinct might be pleaded to justify a frank selshness that deed all claims but its own.2 But it frequently passes into a sense which has a decided bearing on “rights.” In such passages as “unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles,”3 the second “unnatural” implies that there is a certain order or harmony, the preservation of which would be “natural.” It leans on the idea of a law of nature, analogous to the order that makes the sun rise. It is implied in such sayings as “nature abhors a vacuum,” “leave nature to work her own cure,” “leave him to time and the medicating eects of nature.” This is an intelligible conception. It is that of deliberate human action on the one side, and all the materials and forces with and on which it works on the other side; and it implies that sometimes it is best to abstain from all deliberate action, and simply drift with wind and tide, acting spontaneously or not at all.
