Modern totalitarianism is an end product; it is not the opening period of a new era. It is indeed the final outcome of positivism as a general philosophy, as an intellectual atmosphere, as a scientific method raised to the level of the absolute and divine. The position that law is will has come to mean that the human will is freed from all universal ideas, from any objective moral order beyond class interests, beyond nationalist or racial programs, beyond economic considerations, beyond unlimited evolutionary progress. But modern totalitarianism has provided the reductio ad absurdum of the axiom, Voluntas facit legem; indeed, it has revitalized in its victims and adversaries the idea of natural law. For resistance to totalitarianism, in which the end results of positivism appear as ethical and intellectual nihilism, had to look for support beyond any mere national tradition or status quo ante and base itself on something superior to history, race, class, scientific method, and the like.
Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, "The Reappearance of Natural Law".
