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He who hungers for an easy formula, resolving all doubts as to "What is law?," is advised to lay aside this article. I deal in no such magic. For law, even though it is the great principle of order in life, must inevitably share in the uncertainties and paradoxes of the fluid reality it partially canalizes. Indeed—and perhaps better stated—law is merely a specially differentiated phase of life, a type of group activity. The problem of law's nature is tremendously complex, and if a few categories and definitions are here hesitatingly advanced, that is because no analysis is possible otherwise. They are not improvised to avoid examination of the tangled tissue of relationships they attempt to describe. Law I define as those rules of conduct which are generally obeyed. General obedience is a consensus within a given community in support of its rules. In Bentley's terms, the phrase "general obedience" looks at the phenomena as group activity, the phrase "consensus" as opinion activity. Despite the obvious ambiguity of these terms, the reader is requested to quiet his impatience. I may succeed in partially elucidating their meaning.

It is in connection with Occam's elaborate theory of property that we can most readily grasp the importance of his theory of higher law, particularly as embodied in the jus gentium. We must, therefore, investigate this subject in considerable detail.In Occam's view, God is originally the source of all property. But, as in the case of law and government, this is true only in the most general and indirect sense. Most property rights arise from human law and only mediately from God, although in a few special cases such rights follow directly from special divine ordination or from lex divina. Occam cites a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theol. II, II, Qu. 44, Art. 2) stating that separate possessions are not according to natural law but are founded upon human or positive law, and are added to natural law through the exercise of human reason. In the primal condition of mankind, or in the state of innocence in the Garden of Eden, all property was common and none was discrete or private. Before Eve came, Adam had only a de facto right of user and no greater right of private property than a sole remaining monk would have in the property of a monastery.

William of Occam has fittingly been called the "most subtle doctor of the Middle Ages." Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, the vast political writings of this famous fourteenth-century scholastic have been surprisingly neglected by modern students, particularly in England and the United States. It is commonly agreed that among general philosophers of the Middle Ages this "second founder of nominalism" is surpassed by St. Thomas Aquinas alone. Surely, therefore, the presumption is reasonable that the encyclopedic mass of Occam's political writings conceals many "diamonds in the rough," only awaiting discovery. The present writer hopes that he may throw some light on certain important problems discussed by Occam, especially that most significant one of a "higher" or fundamental law.An impression seems prevalent in many quarters that Occam obtained most of his political ideas from his famous contemporary, Marsiglio of Padua, who has established himself among modern students as the really great political genius of his times. Without detracting from Marsiglio's well-deserved fame, we are quite unable to accept this view. On the contrary, Occam, as might be expected of such a great general philosopher, can stand upon his own feet, and his political theory in many respects exhibits characteristics entirely independent of any Marsiglian influence.