Abstract

This book comprises Cameron's Terry Lectures at Yale, given in 1964-1965 before a disappointingly small audience. Disappointing, primarily because the lectures represent a serious analysis of a significant, though often neglected, aspect of classical natural law, natural theology doctrines. This is the concept of vicarious authority with its corresponding claim of an independent access to truth on the part of one subject to authority. This is surely an important historical as well as contemporary notion in jurisprudence and ecclesiology. Cameron's analysis and documentation is rich, thoughtful, and encompassing. This may have made the lectures too serious and dense, but it makes the book satisfying and thought-provoking, and deserving of a much larger audience than could have filled the lecture hall.—W. G. E.