a development marked by the transformation of natural law from pantheism to natural voluntarism.44 Mediaeval natural law theory sets a standard for law according to which the law proper reflects something intrinsically good, and hence unconditionally binding for the conduct of all men, which makes positive law binding on all men if, and only if, its prescripts correspond to the law of nature.45 In reality the relationship between natural law and positive law is, and always has been, ambiguous and far more complicated than natural law theory would have it. For instance, the texts of the primary authority and developer of natural law during the MiddleAges, StThomas Aquinas (1225-1274), bears witness to this fact. He distinguished between lex aeterna and lex humana, and chiefly argued that lex humana was only binding on men if it was just per se, in other words if it corresponded to lex aeterna.46 Hence, any substantial,metaphysical iniquity of lex humana frees men from their obligation to obey the lex humana.47 However, lex humana can also be unfair on a lesser level, for instance, if it is:“… badly conceived and humanly unfair [whereby] the extent of any moral obligation to obey [the unjust lex humana] would depend on the circumstances”.48 What these circumstances amount to is unclear, but St Thomas Aquinas’s pragmatic attitude towards the inherent justice of slavery serves as an example of how the iniquity of positive law was to be judged.The institution of slavery, according to the primary rules of natural law, was unjust and thus lacked natural legal validity. But, St Aquinas still acknowledge that slavery, on the one hand, was part of secondary natural law - that p a r t v i i , c h a p t e r 1 574 44 See, e.g.,Welzel, Naturrecht, pp. 47-56 and 89-105; Kaufmann, Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 52-59. 45 See, e.g., ibid., pp. 57-66;Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., pp. 49-52 and 246; McCoubrey and White, Textbook on Jurisprudence, pp. 56-57 and 65-71; Schlosser, Grundzüge, pp. 78-80; Morrison, Jurisprudence: from the Greeks to Post-modernism, pp. 69-71; Schröder, Recht alsWissenschaft, pp. 110-111. 46 Kaufmann, Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 46-51. 47 McCoubrey andWhite, Textbook on Jurisprudence, pp. 68-71. 48 Ibid., p. 70. Contents of square brackets added here.
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