Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law

To the benevolent reader - greetings.

It would seem superfluous, if the practice of so many learned men had not made it almost mandatory, to write a preface explaining the purpose of this work. It is immediately clear that I have done no more than expound to beginners the principal topics of natural law in a short and, I hope, lucid compendium. I would not want students to be put off at the beginning by a massive accumulation of difficult questions, as would happen if they were to set out on the wide expanses of this subject without a knowledge of what one might call the elements. I also believe it to be in the public interest to steep their minds in a moral doctrine whose usefulness in civil life is accepted as obvious. In any other case I would naturally take it to be too trivial a task to reduce an extensive work to the form of a compendium, particularly a work of my own; but I think that in this case no sensible person will blame me for spending so much labour on a task which is uniquely useful to young people, particularly as I undertook it at the behest of my superiors. One's Obligation to the young is such that no work undertaken for their benefit should be thought to be below anyone's dignity even if it gives no opportunity for brilliant or profound thought. Besides, no one with even a grain of sense will deny that such basic principles are better suited to the universal discipline of law than are the elements of any particular System of civil law.

So much might have seemed sufficient, but certain people have advised me that it would be pertinent to make some remarks directed towards understanding the character of natural law in general and towards a careful delineation of its boundaries. I am the more happy to do this as I may in this way remove the excuse for men of misplaced subtlety to apply their feverish criticism to the discipline of natural law. It is quite distinct from their province; there is a line of demarcation between them.