 Accordingly, “the most common rule [regula]” of actions, called the right (ius) or law (lex) of nature, enjoins that humans “must, inasmuch as [they] can, cultivate and maintain toward others a peaceable sociality that is consistent with the native character and end of humankind in general” (DJN II.3. 1 and 15; Pufendorf 1994a, pp. 148, 152). This law does not rest on an intrinsic morality of actions, an absolute value of persons, on common agreement among humans, or even on the long-term utility that generally follows compliance with its injunctions (DJN II.3.4, 7–8,10) – though the latter two are not denied. Rather, it appeals to a divine superior who is taken to enjoin that which right reason itself can discover to be in humans’ interest. (DJN II.3.19) That is, while the law’s content or practical purposiveness is articulated by right reason observing “man’s nature, condition, and inclinations, … other things external to man, especially those capable of benefiting or harming him in some way[,] … and the kinds of assistance and restraint he needs” (DJN II.3.14; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 151), its normative force as law depends formally on the will of a super-human authority with the power of sanction (DJN II.3.19–20). Pufendorf grants that the latter relationship remains “somewhat obscure” for those who follow the light of reason alone, since natural sanctions are imperfect and supernatural sanctions out of play (DJN II.3.21, III.4.6). However, the voluntarist problem of arbitrariness is avoided by positing (Pufendorf thinks proving, through natural theology [DO I.4]) divine benevolence (providence) and consistency: human nature and the law regulating it are willed together by God for human benefit (DJN II.3.4–5). (More agnostically, one might refer to the benignity of things, as it were, the starting assumption that, at the least, the world is not decidedly against us.) And that supposition in turn is supported by the evidence of actual experience (both historical and contemporary), which is in any case the only way to discern and understand the law’s requirements (DJN II.3.12). In short, God is not perverse, and the world not entirely inhospitable to morality and human welfare.