 And in some ways, the research for this book corrected a misconception that I had. For years, I've taught in class that I thought that Oliver Wendell Holmes's view of natural law was an outgrowth of his experience in the Civil War. When I really drilled down on it, it seemed very clear that he had rejected natural law in college at Harvard. In fact, I think there's ample evidence that he may have been an atheist as early as college.