reason, and sanctioned by rewards and punishments. By thus holding the law of God to be knowable by natural reason, they distinguished it from the divine law of the Hebrews and mediaeval moralists. This distinction might be expressed by calling the ethics of the former theologic juralism, the latter Hebraic juralism.
The most thorough-going presentation of theologic juralism in moral philosophy, the culmination of the ethical theories of 'natural theology' as taught in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is found in the system of Paley. With him the law of God is no mere incidental factor or theoretic basis, but the moving principle of the whole system. The moral law is conceived in complete analogy with civil law. It is the express command of a lawgiver who has the authority and power to enforce his will by rewards and punishments. In the ethical systems thus far considered we have found the law of nature, the law of God in two forms, and the law of the state, playing a more or less prominent part. Natural juralism, Hebraic juralism, theologic juralism, and civil juralism all involve the notion of a source of law apart from man. These systems, therefore, may all be designated as heteronomous. In signal contrast with all these is the system of Kant, which finds the moral law in the man himself, — the autonomous system.
In the present century the tendency of ethics, on the whole, has been away from the jural type. The phrase 'moral law,' however, has continued to occupy a prominent place in ethical discussions. The popular conception of morality as the command of the deity, the long and honorable history of the term in philosophy, the majesty of the civil law, the appropriateness of the term to express the unconditional necessity of moral duties, all of these circumstances combine to keep the term in use, even though it is regarded as only a metaphor. Perhaps, too, the use of the word 'law' in the physical sciences has made moralists who retain little of the old jural sense of the term still cling to the word. "Metaphors from law and metaphors from war," says Bagehot, "make most of our current moral phrases, and a nice examination would easily explain that
