The laws of Nature and existence define life of every living creature, including human beings. The laws that people create are based on the universal laws of the physical and non-physical world. The fact that people base their laws on some preceding laws or laws that already existed, even before people were able to formulate and recognize them, means that there is some other source for these laws to exist in the universe. They have existed even before humans could interpret them and base their society on the regulations, which are thought to be universal and unchanging.
Augustine supports the view that nature has a way of “imprinting eternal law” onto everything that exists. The argument that is being made is that people can comprehend anything or any entity in two ways: one way is “through itself” and the second is “through its effects.” To know something “through itself” means to understand and know the entity in the fullest way and everything that makes it real. It is claimed that this sort of knowledge is unattainable by human beings because they are not evolved enough to understand anything fully. Only God is able to know “something” in its whole and to the last detail. For example, when a person looks at a tree, it is clear that it’s made of smaller units that together make up a tree. A person can know its function—production of oxygen and absorption of carbon dioxide and the way it achieves this function, the process of photosynthesis. People can understand how the tree’s system works—absorption of water through roots and then the transfer of water molecules all over the tree. The functions, purpose and the mechanism of the functions of the tree is the secondary understanding that humans possess of the entity, which is the tree. People can only perceive the tree through its physical attributes, which people can see, feel, smell, touch and hear—the basic human senses. But there is no possibility for anyone to know the eternal mechanisms of the tree because humans are physically part of all object, they are an extension of Nature while God is Nature and so, only God or anyone “allowed” by God to know the true meaning of things can really understand something that exists. This argument is reasonable and logical because it is obvious that no human being can physically get inside the atoms and molecules and comprehend the functions and source of all the nano or even smaller particles of the microscopic entities. People did not create the idea of the tree, they did not make the tree out of nothing, they just found it as it existed, even before there were any humans to see it. The idea of the tree, the concept, has already existed before and this means that there must have been some force that placed the tree there and made it function in the specific way that it does function. A tree cannot be used for other purposes except those that it naturally possesses. So, everything people see and do came about through the extension of the eternal law. But, in reality, it can be doubted that our perception of the tree is the same as the way a lion perceives a tree or the way an ant does. This begs a question—if different species see and perceive eternal law differently, is it really a part of the universal truth or maybe each living thing has its own universal truth?
Augustine views the laws of nature as follows: “temporal law is only just and lawful in as much as it reflects the eternal law”. This means that the laws and understanding that people have of anything is a “reflection” or extension of the eternal law in the world, which is outside of humans’ understanding. The immaterial idea of the eternal laws is what creates and gives a meaning to something. It establishes certain physical properties that people can comprehend. And only then, after a person experiences eternal law, it is possible to understand the functions of the object that is being observed. The purpose of the object is the secondary stage of understanding. The first stage is the Divine truth of the object, which is unattainable by people. Human beings experience the eternal truth by understanding the purposes and effects of the entities that were created by God. This can be seen as a signal that the eternal force gives humans through the objects placed before them. The properties and mechanisms of something were created specifically so that people would understand these purposes and then use this knowledge to make something else out of it. People can modify the already existing object and come up with new ways of using its properties and functions. The way people comprehend these “extensions” of the universal properties of an object is common to all people, indifferent to their society and beliefs. Everyone has the same senses and so, the majority of people perceive water in the same way. Every person in the world knows that water is drinkable and very much needed for anyone to survive. This basic and instinctual knowledge in universal to all but it was not created by people, it is the eternal truth, which people can recognize and figure out. But, at the same time, there could be people, whose perspective and understanding are so different from the majority that they see water as being something else. They could use not only their logical reasoning in comprehending water but their feeling or soul to truly recognize and “feel” water. Someone who is crossing a desert might see water as a life-saver and someone who experiences a flood might see it as a life-taker. This difference in perspectives makes the circumstances and comprehension of water unique to that particular time and space. The conditions that were in place, which created this different perspective, were not made by humans, again, they were put in place by the eternal laws and physics of the universe. So, it can be seen that even the perspective and constitutions of the environment, as well as objects themselves are an extension of the eternal laws.
An idea that is a universal truth is part of the immaterial world. It is not a physical object, it is a piece of information that can be received by the brain but not created. People simply absorb knowledge, they do not create it, it is God or Divine Force that creates this knowledge. The only way people can understand something that is eternal, is by using their souls and emotions and not thoughts and logical reasoning.