Today, nature is often understood as the external physical environment that surrounds us. For the ancients, physis / natura was an immanent, life-giving force ; according to a definition by Aristotle, " a principle and cause of movement and rest for the thing in which it immediately resides ". The harmonious spectacle of living beings and celestial bodies was where philosophers saw this natura, as an immanent power. But this nature produces different effects in different beings. It is only to humans and gods that it also brings reason, which implies a scale of living things and the conception that the world is at the service of men (and gods).
According to the Roman reception of the idea of physis, particularly in the wake of Stoic doctrine, natura is also the basis of ethics. Hence, finally, the anthropocentric configuration of law.
