The race that knows Joseph

SN. 141 ~ 145

XI

141 Human choice, by its nature most uncertain, is made certain and determined by the common sense of men with respect to human needs or utilities, which are the two origins of the natural law of nations.

XII

142 Common sense is judgement without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entire nation, or the whole human race.

143 This axiom, which the following definition, will provide a new art of criticism concerning the founders of nations, who must have preceded by more than a thousand years the writers with whom criticism has so far been occupied.

XIII

144 Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

145 This axiom is a great principle which establishes the common sense of the human race as the criterion taught to the nations by divine providence to define what is certain in the natural law of nations. And the nations reach this certainty by recognizing the underlying agreements which, despite variations of detail, obtain among them all in respect of this law. Thence issues the mental dictionary for assigning origins to all the divers articulated languages. By means of this dictionary is conceived the ideal eternal history which determines the histories in time of all the nations. The axiom proper to this dictionary and to this history will shortly be proposed.