Here we turn to the metaphysical background of law which also purports to be its logical explanation and justification. The relationship between man and man is not the outcome of some quixotic agreement but a rational necessity dictated by the structure of the universe. Human relationship cannot be made or unmade according to fancy, for it is rooted in a fixed pattern of structural behaviour which is harmonious with the nature of the universe as a whole as manifest in the various degrees or realms of its expression. The necessity for law arises on account of a need felt to rise and grow into a higher degree of reality than the one in which one finds oneself at a given moment. The growth into a higher order of reality is both quantitative and qualitative in a measure in which the two aspects cannot be distinguished one from the other. The higher degree of reality connotes and implies not only a wider inclusiveness of quantitative measure but also a deeper profundity of knowledge and wisdom and an insight into the nature of things. To give an example: Is not man more than a mere total or an assemblage of the different limbs of his body? All the parts of the body of a man, even when viewed together, cannot be regarded as the man himself, for what we mean by man is a. significant meaning or a transcendent essence vitalising and animating the body and the personality, rather than the body or the personality by itself. Man is a significance, a connotation, a suggestiveness, the state of an integrated consciousness, and not merely a physical body, a psychological unit or a social personality.

Even so is the concept of a nation, which is more a spirit than a sum or an assemblage of people and things. The meaning of this position can be appreciated if we consider for a while such phenomena as, for instance, large number of persons recruiting themselves as soldiers and even dying in a war waged in what is regarded as the interest or the welfare of the nation. Obviously, no one would ever believe that the nation for whose sake people are ready to sacrifice themselves is just the ground of the earth, mountains and rivers, for these do not require protection and they stand by themselves unconcerned with man's predicament. What seems to be in the mind of people, evidently, when they entertain the notion of the nation, is the group of people arranged into a conceptual network or pattern of wholeness governed by a uniform ideology, cultural aim or ultimate purpose. On this ground, the nation is inclusive of everyone, even the soldiers going for a battle. Even supposing that a large percentage of people as soldiers die in a battle waged in the interest of the nation, no one feels that a part of the nation is dead or that the nation is now alive only as seventy-five per cent or fifty per cent. The nation does not perish even if the majority of people cease to be for some reason, and this is so because the nation is not the person or the physical assembly of individual bodies. Even if fifty per cent of the limbs of the body of a person is to be amputated for medical reasons, the man remains still a whole and never feels that half of him has gone and that only half is alive. That the spirit is not the same as the letter, that the invisible is a greater reality than the visible, can easily be seen on a little in-depth examination of anything.

The ethical or what are known as moral laws, also, stand by this test of spirit ruling the letter, intention standing above routine or outer form. Else, how would one explain the universally acceptable law that no one can injure or harm another on any account and yet feel justified in maintaining defence forces to avert self-annihilation? Here is a subtlety which accepts human behaviour and conduct to be regulated not by the instinct of love and hate, but by obedience to the law of the spirit transcending the isolated instincts of individuals or even a group of individuals. Here is the principle of Ahimsa, or non-injury, thrown into the crucible of a test which can be broadly categorised as utility, coherence, or self-realisation. Though the meanings hidden behind these nomenclatures of behavioural and ethical operation seem to be outwardly different one from the other, there is an undercurrent of a common significance and a uniformity of meaning in all this operational attitudes. Though, sometimes, it appears that truth cannot go counter to its utility in life, the sense of utility cannot but maintain a coherence within its structure, inasmuch as the utility has to be a feature of the common welfare of everyone and cannot be just the favourable utility of someone to the detriment of others. Here, even the idea of utility has to be governed by the principle of coherence, which latter ensures security to people in general and does not convert utility into a picture of selfishness. But what is coherence, and what is its intention, what is the purpose? Here we are face to face with the question behind all questions.

There can be a justification in the necessity felt for the introduction of coherence among values of human utility for another reason altogether, which is neither just empirical utility nor mere logical coherence. And that is the demand for the self-realisation of Spirit. There is an inherent, unbending, unrelenting and eternally operative requirement in everyone to be in a state of self-realisation, which, in the purely physical personality, takes the form of an undividedness of feeling that one is what one is, and one cannot be other than what one is. This is the law of identity, namely, A is A, and A cannot be B. This strange persistent urge to maintain a conscious self-identity is the principle of self-realisation manifest in the lowest degree of reality, that is, the physical organism which lives and works with an intention and purpose. But, as observed above, the individual self-hood can maintain itself only precariously in the absence of its adjustment, adaptation, harmony and coherence with other people in the world, call them families, communities, or nations. These latter are the wider forms of the very same impulse for self-realisation as revealed in the world of space and time, but demanding self-identity at their own levels, and brooking no interference from anything outside that particular unit of selfhood, whatever be its degree of inclusiveness or expansiveness. There would be no necessity to dilate on this issue any further, since this appreciation of the way of things in general would automatically land itself in the recognition that a Universal Selfhood alone can explain and account for the very meaning of the life of anything, and it is its affirmation in graded forms of inclusiveness that goes by the name of law, righteousness or justice.

The above also explains why Nature and history never care for individuals, and even the strongest of empires and the greatest of men have been reduced to the dust of the earth. Not even the best of actors is allowed a continuous and unending performance in the drama of creation. There is a coming and going of things, as required by the change of scenes which constitute the beauty of the enactment. It is not the individual, whether in the form of a person, family, community or an empire, that is of any value to the universal justice, for, what is of value is the universal intention, the universal purpose -  the largest universality of selfhood with no external interference or conditioning by way of limitation. Moral virtues and ethical codes relating to the norms of non-violence, truthfulness, continence, appropriation of property and permissiveness to enjoy security, do all finally hang on this final justification to be found in every one of their normative shapes in personal and social behaviour, namely, a healthy balancing of every order of reality, right from the level of the lowest individuality, as required by the necessity to grow by a gradual ascent through degrees, to the general selfhood of the universe.

The need for norms of any kind in one's behaviour arises due to the necessity to grant the same permission as given to oneself to other people also in the world. While everyone is to be granted the highest freedom, it loses its sense when such a freedom cannot be granted, at the same time, equally, to others also in the world. Unrestricted individual freedom granted to all would be another name for a tendency to the annihilation of all life - strange, that freedom can lead to destruction. But this is so because freedom is a universal principle and not an individual prerogative. The higher always justifies and can justify the lower, and the lower is not supposed to stand independently by itself. The aim of an action has to be justified. The reason behind the choosing of this aim has also to be justified. The means adopted to fulfil the aim is, again, to be justifiable. Finally, the consequence that may follow from the action should also be justifiable. And justice consists in the integral security of any order of reality.

Our duties, as well as character and conduct, are determined by the nature of the meaning that we are able to see in life, or, rather, the aim of life which is the ultimate objective towards the achievement of which every activity is directed. This would mean that the way in which one thinks, lives and acts, the manner of one's behaviour towards others, and ones relationship with the general atmosphere around, are all fixed by the pattern of the meaning discoverable in life - the final aim of life. Though it may appear that the ultimate goal towards which one is directing one's life is far remote somewhere in the future, it goes without saying that even the minimal step that one takes in any direction at the present moment is entirely governed by the law which is the stuff and substance of the ultimate purpose of all life. Law is, thus, an operation of the system of the Absolute in different evolutionary degrees of comprehensiveness and perfection, right from the revolution of an atom or the vibration of an electron to the ultimate causality of the universe. Personal needs, social laws and political systems of administration cannot, therefore, be separated from the requisitions necessitated by the very nature of the final unity of all things. It is this Universal Transcendent Principle that creates, sustains, rewards or punishes individual systems and organisations by its gradational actions and reactions. Here is also the explanation as to why individual systems strive for mutual love and cooperation, and at the same time, keep themselves ready with a knife hidden in their armpits. Life is a perpetual battle between the empirical and the transcendent, the external and the universal, time and eternity.

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