What I'm reading, when I should be in bed...

"One may wonder whether the study of moral nature and of natural law is a way to the knowledge of God or whether the knowledge of God must be had before the proposition that there exists a natural law of moral world is established. We may be able to show that the truth is better expressed by the first part of this alternative. Just as the consideration of beauty in things perishable leads to unparticipated Beauty- remember the speech of Socrates in the Symposium- so the consideration of law in human affairs leads to the unparticipated Law, the eternal law which is identical with the divine intellect and the divine substance. Acquaintance with natural law, being a way to God, would be logically antecedent to the knowledge of God's existence. But from this logical priority in the order of discovery it does not follow that the understanding of natural law can be logically preserved in case of failure to recognize in God the ultimate foundation of all laws. Again, the intelligence of natural law is a way to God"(The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher's Reflections by Yves R. Simon, 62).