Study in Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 16

LAWS : NATURAL AND MAN-MADE 7
known to the prophet, unknown to his ignorant hearers; because of their ignorance, his hearers have regarded his declarations aš arbitrary commands of a divine lawgiver, sent through him, instead of. as mere statements of fact concerning the succession of moral phenomena in a region as orderly as the physical:
Law, in the secondary social sense, is an enactntent laid down by an authority regarded as legitimate. It may be the edict of an autocrat, or the act of a legislative assembly; in either case the force of the law depends on the recognition of the authority which makes it. Among the Hindus we find the ideas both of man-made and natural law. The King, in the conception of the Manu, is an autocrat, and the subject must obey ; but above the King is a Law to which he in his turn must be obedient, a Law which acts automatically and is in the