Chapter XIII: Part 13

238. (2) Such an interest being the basis of family relations, it is quite intelligible that everyone actuated by the interest should recognise, and be recognised by, everyone else to whom he ascribes an interest like his own, as entitled to behave towards the objects of the interest--towards his wife and children--in a manner from which everyone else is excluded; that there should thus come to be rights in family relations to a certain privacy in dealing with them; rights to deal with them as his alone and not another's; claims, ratified by the general sense of their admission being for the common good, to exercise certain powers and demand certain forbearances from others, in regard to wife and children. It is only indeed at an advanced stage of reflection that men learn to ascribe to other men, simply as men, the interests which they experience themselves; and hence it is at first only within narrow societies that men secure to each other the due privileges and privacies of family life. In others of the same kin or tribe they can habitually imagine an interest like that of which each feels his own family life to be the expression, and hence in them they spontaneously respect family rights; but they cannot thus practically think themselves into the position of a stranger, and hence towards him they do not observe the same restraints. They do not regard the women of another nation as sacred to the husbands and families of that nation. But that power of making another's good one's own, which in the more intense and individualised form is the basis of family relations, must always at the same time exist in that more diffused form in which it serves as the basis of a society held together by the recognition of a common good. Wherever, therefore, the family relations exist, there is sure to exist also a wider society which by its authority gives to the powers exercised in those relations the character of rights. By what process the relations of husband and wife and the institution of the household may have come to be formed among descendants of a single pair, it is impossible to conceive or to discover, but in fact we find no trace in primitive history of households except as constituents of a clan recognising a common origin; and it is by the customs of the clan, founded on the conception of a common good, that those forbearances on the part of members of one household in dealing with another, which are necessary to the privacy of the several households, are secured.

239. The history of the development of family life is the history of the process _(a)_ by which family rights have come to be regarded as independent of the special custom of a clan and the special laws of a state, as rights which all men and women, as such, are entitled to. This, however, characterises the history of all rights alike. It is a history farther _(b)_ of the process by which the true nature of these rights has come to be recognised, as rights over persons; rights of which persons are the objects, and which therefore imply reciprocal claims on the part of those over whom they are exercised and of those who exercise them. The establishment of monogamy, the abolition of 'patria potestas' in its various forms, the 'emancipation of women' (in the proper sense of the phrase), are involved in these two processes. The principles (1) that all men and all women are entitled to marry and form households, (2) that within the household the claims of the husband and wife are throughout reciprocal, cannot be realised without carrying with them not merely monogamy, but the removal of those faulty relations between men and women which survive in countries where monogamy is established by law.

240. Under a system of polygamy, just so far as it is carried out, there must be men who are debarred from marrying. It can only exist, indeed, alongside of a slavery, which excludes masses of men from the right of forming a family. Nor does the wife, under a polygamous system, though she ostensibly marries, form a household, or become the co-ordinate head of a family, at all. The husband alone is head of the family and has authority over the children. The wife, indeed, who for the time is the favourite, may practically share the authority, but even she has no equal and assured position. The 'consortium omnis vitae,' the 'individua vitae consuetudo,' which according to the definition in the Digest is an essential element in marriage, is not hers. [1] [2]

And further as the polygamous husband requires a self-restraint from his wife which he does not put on himself, he is treating her unequally. He demands a continence from her which, unless she is kept in the confinement of slavery, can only rest on the attachment of a person to a person and on a personal sense of duty, and at the same time is practically ignoring the demand, which this personal attachment on her part necessarily carries with it, that he should keep himself for her as she keeps herself for him. The recognition of children as having claims upon their parents reciprocal to those of the parents over them, equally involves the condemnation of polygamy. For these claims can only be duly satisfied, the responsibilities of father and mother towards the children (potentially persons) whom they have brought into the world can only be fulfilled, if father and mother jointly take part in the education of the children; if the children learn to love and obey father and mother as one authority. But if there is no permanent 'consortium vitae' of one husband with one wife, this joint authority over the children becomes impossible. The child, when its physical dependence on the mother is over, ceases to stand in any special relation to her. She has no recognised duties to him, or he to her. These lie between him and his father only, and just because the father's interests are divided between the children of many wives, and because these render their filial offices to the father separately, not to father and mother jointly, the true domestic training is lost.

[1] 'Nuptiae sunt conjunctio maris et feminae, consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani juris communicatio' _Digest_, xxiii. 2, 1. 'Matrimonium est viri et mulieris conjunctio individuam vita consuetudinem continens.' Inst., i.9.2. (Quoted by Trendelenburg, _Naturrecht_, p. 282.)

[2] [Latin consortium omnis vitae = partnership for life individua vitae consuetudo = unbroken companionship of life Tr]

241. Monogamy, however, may be established, and an advance so far made towards the establishment of a due reciprocity between husband and wife, as well as towards a fulfilment of the responsibilities incurred in bringing children into the world, while yet the true claims of men in respect of women, and of women in respect of men, and of children upon their parents, are far from being generally realised. Wherever slavery exists alongside of monogamy, on the one side people of the slave class are prevented from forming family ties, and on the other those people who are privileged to marry, though they are confined to one wife, are constantly tempted to be false to the true monogamistic idea by the opportunity of using women as chattels to minister to their pleasures. The wife is thus no more than an institution, invested with certain dignities and privileges, for the continuation of the family; a continuation, which under pagan religions is considered necessary for the maintenance of certain ceremonies, and to which among ourselves an importance is attached wholly unconnected with the personal affection of the man for the wife. [1] When slavery is abolished, and the title of all men and women equally to form families is established by law, the conception of the position of the wife necessarily rises. The ἑταίρα and παλλακή [2] cease at any rate to be recognised accompaniments of married life, and the claim of the wife upon the husband's fidelity, as reciprocal to his claim upon hers, becomes established by law.

[1] Her position among the Greeks is well illustrated by a passage from the speech of Demosthenes (?) against Neaera, Sect. 122 (quoted by W. E. Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 71). τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἑταίρας ἡδονῆς ἕνεκʹ ἔχομεν, τὰς δὲ παλλακὰς τῆς καθʹ ἡμέραν θεραπείας του σώματος, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας τοῦ παιδοποιεῖσθαι γνησίως καὶ τῶν ἔνδον φύλακα πιστὴν ἔχειν (tas men gar hetairas hedones henek echomen, tas de pallakas tes kath' hemeran therapeias tou somatos, tas de gynaikas tou paidopoieisthai gnesios kai ton endon phylaka pisten echein). [The query as to Demosthenes' authorship is in Green's text. Hearn translates this passage: Mistresses we keep for pleasure, concubines for daily attendance on our persons, wives to bear us legitimate children and to be our faithful housekeepers. Tr]

[2] [Greek ἑταίρα (hetaira) = courtesan, παλλακή (pallake) = concubine. Tr]

242. Thus that marriage should only be lawful with one wife, that it should be for life, that it should be terminable by the infidelity of either husband or wife, are rules of right; not of morality, as such, but of right. Without such rules the rights of the married persons are not maintained. Those outward conditions of family life would not be secured to them, which are necessary on the whole for the development of a free morality. Polygamy is a violation of the rights, (1) of those who through it are indirectly excluded from regular marriage, and thus from the moral education which results from this; (2) of the wife, who is morally lowered by exclusion from her proper position in the household and by being used, more or less, as the mere instrument of the husband's pleasure; (3) of the children, who lose the chance of that full moral training which depends on the connected action of father and mother. The terminability of marriage at the pleasure of one of the parties to it (of its terminability at the desire of both we will speak presently) is a violation of the rights at any rate of the unconsenting party, on the grounds _(a)_ that liability to it tends to prevent marriage from becoming that 'individua vitae consuetudo' which gives it its moral value, and _(b)_ that, when the marriage is dissolved, the woman, just in proportion to her capacity for self-devotion and the degree to which she has devoted herself to her original husband, is debarred from forming that 'individua vitae consuetudo' again, and thus crippled in her moral possibilities. It is a violation of the rights of children for the same reason for which polygamy is so.

On the other hand, that the wife should be bound indissolubly by the marriage-tie to an unfaithful husband (or _vice versa_), is a violation of the right of wife (or husband, as the case may be), because on the one hand the restraint which makes her liable to be used physically as the instrument of the husband's pleasures, when there is no longer reciprocal devotion between them, is a restraint which (except in peculiar cases) renders moral elevation impossible; and on the other, she is prevented from forming such a true marriage as would be, according to ordinary rules, the condition of the realisation of her moral capacities. Though the husband's right to divorce from an unfaithful wife has been much more thoroughly recognised than the wife's to divorce from an unfaithful husband, he would be in fact less seriously wronged by the inability to obtain a divorce, for it is only the second of the grounds just stated that fully applies to him. The rights of the children do not seem so plainly concerned in the dissolution of a marriage to which husband or wife has been unfaithful. In some cases the best chance for them might seem to lie in the infidelities being condoned and an outward family peace re-established. But that their rights are violated by the infidelity itself is plain. In the most definite way it detracts from their possibilities of goodness. Without any consent on their part, quite independently of any action of their own will, they are placed by it in a position which tends--though special grace may counteract it--to put the higher kinds of goodness beyond their reach.

243. These considerations suggest some further questions which may be discussed under the following heads. (1) If infidelity in marriage is a violation of rights in the manner stated, and if (as it must be) it is a wilful and knowing violation, why is it not treated as a crime, and, like other such violations of rights, punished by the state in order to the better maintenance of rights? (2) Should any other reason but the infidelity of husband or wife be allowed for the legal dissolution of the marriage-tie? (3) How are the rights connected with marriage related to the morality of marriage?

(1) There is good reason why the state should not take upon itself to institute charges of adultery, but leave them to be instituted by the individuals whose rights the adultery violates. The reasons ordinarily alleged would be, _(a)_ the analogy of ordinary breaches of contract, against which the state leaves it to the individual injured to set the law in motion; _(b)_ the practical impossibility of preventing adultery through the action of the functionaries of the state. The analogy, however, from ordinary breaches of contract does not really hold. In the first place, though marriage involves contract, though without contract there can be no marriage, yet marriage at once gives rise to rights and obligations of a kind which cannot arise out of contract, in particular to obligations towards the children born of the marriage. These children, at any rate, are in no condition to seek redress--even if from the nature of the case redress could be had--for the injuries inflicted on them by a parent's adultery, as a person injured by a breach of contract can seek redress for it. Again, though the state leaves it to the individual injured by a breach of contract to institute proceedings for redress, if the breach involves fraud, it, at any rate in certain cases, treats the fraud as a crime and punishes. Now in every breach of the marriage-contract by adultery there is that which answers to fraud in the case of ordinary breach of contract. The marriage-contract is broken knowingly and intentionally. If there were no reason to the contrary, then, it would seem that the state, though it might leave to the injured individuals the institution of proceedings against adultery, should yet treat adultery as a crime and seek to prevent it by punishment in the interest of those whose virtual rights are violated by it, though not in the way of breach of contract. But there are reasons to the contrary--reasons that arise out of the moral purposes served by the marriage-tie--which make it desirable both that it should be at the discretion of the directly injured party whether a case of adultery should be judicially dealt with at all, and that in no case should penal terror be associated with such a violation of the marriage-bond Under ordinary conditions, it is a public injury that a violation of his rights should be condoned by the person suffering it. If the injured individual were likely to fail in the institution of proceedings for his own redress or defence, the public interest would require that the matter should be taken out of his hands. But if an injured wife or husband is willing to condone a breach of his or her rights through adultery, it is generally best that it should be condoned. That married life should be continued in spite of anything like dissoluteness on the part of husband or wife, is no doubt undesirable. The moral purposes which married life should serve cannot be served, either for the married persons themselves or for the children, under such conditions. On the other hand, the condonation of a single offence would generally be better for all concerned than an application for divorce. The line cannot be drawn at which, with a view to the higher ends which marriage should serve, divorce becomes desirable. It is therefore best that the state, while uniformly allowing the right of divorce where the marriage-bond has been broken by adultery (since otherwise the right of everyone to form a true marriage, a marriage which shall be the basis of family life, is neutralised,) and taking care that procedure for divorce be cheap and easy, should leave the enforcement of the right to the discretion of individuals.

244. On similar grounds, it is undesirable that adultery as such should be treated as a crime, that penal terror should be associated with it. Though rights, in the strict sense, undoubtedly arise out of marriage, though marriage has thus its strictly legal aspect, it is undesirable that this legal aspect should become prominent. It may suffer in respect of its higher moral purposes, if the element of force appears too strongly in the maintenance of the rights to which it gives rise. If a husband who would otherwise be false to the marriage-bond is kept outwardly faithful to it by fear of the punishment which might attend its breach, the right of the wife and children is indeed so far protected, but is anything gained for those moral ends, for the sake of which the maintenance of these rights is alone of value? The man in whom disloyal passion is neutralised by fear of punishment will contribute little in his family life to the moral development of himself, his wife, or his children. If he cannot be kept true by family affection and sympathy with the social disapprobation attaching to matrimonial infidelity (and unless it is a matter of social disapprobation no penalties will be effectually enforced against it), he will not be kept true in a way that is of any value to those concerned by fear of penalties. In other words, the rights that arise out of marriage are not of a kind which can in their essence be protected by associating penal terror with their violation, as the rights of life and property can be. They are not rights to claim mere forbearances or to claim the performance of certain outward actions, by which a right is satisfied irrespectively of the disposition with which the act is done. They are claims which cannot be met without a certain disposition on the part of the person upon whom the claim rests, and that disposition cannot be enforced. The attempt to enforce the outward behaviour in order to satisfy the claim, which is a claim not to the outward behaviour merely but to this in connection with a certain disposition, defeats its own end.

245. For the protection, therefore, of the rights of married persons and their children against infidelity, it does not appear that the law can do more than secure facilities of divorce in the case of adultery. This indeed is not in itself a protection against the wrong involved in adultery, but rather a deliverance from the further wrong to the injured husband or wife and to the children that would be involved in the continuance of any legal claim over them on the part of the injurer. But indirectly it helps to prevent the wrong being done by bringing social disapprobation to bear on cases of infidelity, and thus helping to keep married persons faithful through sympathy with the disapprobation of which they feel that they would be the objects when they imagine themselves unfaithful. The only other effectual way in which the state can guard against the injuries in question is by requiring great precaution and solemnity in the contraction of marriages. This it can do by insisting on the consent of parents to the marriage of all minors, exacting a long notice (perhaps even a preliminary notice of betrothal), and, while not preventing civil marriage, by encouraging the celebration of marriage in the presence of religious congregations and with religious rites.

246. Question (2) is one that does not admit of being answered on any absolute principle We must bear in mind that all rights--in idea or as they should be--are relative to moral ends. The ground for securing to individuals in respect of the marriage-tie certain powers as rights, is that in a general way they are necessary to the possibility of a morally good life, either directly to the persons exercising them or to their children. The more completely marriage is a 'consortium omnis vitae' in the sense of a unity in all interests and for the whole of a lifetime, the more likely are the external conditions of a moral life to be fulfilled in regard both to married persons and their children. Therefore the general rule of the state in dealing with marriage should be to secure such powers as are favourable and withhold such as are not favourable to the 'consortium omnis vitae.' But in the application of the principle great difficulties arise. Lunacy may clearly render the 'consortium omnis vitae' finally impossible; but what kind and degree of lunacy? If the lunatic may possibly recover, though there is undoubtedly reason for the separation from husband or wife during lunacy, should permanent divorce be allowed? If it is allowed, and the lunatic recovers, a wrong will have been done both to him and to the children previously born of the marriage. On the other hand, to reserve the connubial rights of a lunatic of whose recovery there is hope, and to restore them when he recovers, may involve the wrong of bringing further children into the world with the taint of lunacy upon them. Is cruelty to be a ground of divorce, and if so, what amount? There is a degree of persistent cruelty which renders 'consortium omnis vitae' impossible, but unless it is certain that cruelty has reached the point at which a restoration of any sort of family life becomes impossible, a greater wrong both to wife and children may be involved in allowing divorce than in refusing it. A husband impatient for the time of the restraint of marriage may be tempted to passing cruelty as a means of ridding himself of it, while if no such escape were open to him he might get the better of the temporary disturbing passion and settle down into a decent husband. The same consideration applies still more strongly to allowing incompatibility of temper as a ground of divorce. It would be hard to deny that it might be of a degree and kind in which it so destroyed the possibility of 'consortium omnis vitae,' that, with a view to the interests of the children, who ought in such a case to be chiefly considered, divorce implied less wrong than the maintenance of the marriage-tie. But on the other hand, to hold out the possibility of divorce on the ground of incompatibility is just the way to generate that incompatibility. On the whole, the only conclusion seems to be that this last ground should not be allowed, and that in deciding on other grounds large discretion should be allowed to a well-constituted court.

P. _RIGHTS AND VIRTUES_

247. We have now considered in a perfunctory way those rights which are antecedent to the state, which are not derived from it but may exist where a state is not, and which it is the office of the state to maintain. We have inquired what it is in the nature of man that renders him capable of these rights, what are the moral ends to which the rights are relative, and in what form the rights should be realised in order to the attainment of these ends. In order to make the inquiry into rights complete, we ought to go on to examine in the same way the rights which arise out of the establishment of a state, the rights connected with the several functions of government; how these functions come to be necessary, and how they may best be fulfilled with a view to those moral ends to which the functions of the state are ultimately relative. According to my project, I should then have proceeded to consider the social virtues, and the 'moral sentiments' which underlie our particular judgments as to what is good and evil in conduct. All virtues are really social; or, more properly, the distinction between social and self-regarding virtues is a false one. Every virtue is self-regarding in the sense that it is a disposition, or habit of will, directed to an end which the man presents to himself as his good; every virtue is social in the sense that unless the good to which the will is directed is one in which the well-being of society in some form or other is involved, the will is not virtuous at all.

248. The virtues are dispositions to exercise positively, in some way contributory to social good, those powers which, because admitting of being so exercised, society should secure to him; the powers which a man has a right to possess, which constitute his rights. It is therefore convenient to arrange the virtues according to the division of rights. E.g. in regard to the right of all men to free life, the obligations, strictly so called, correlative to that right having been considered (obligations which are all of a negative nature, obligations to forbear from meddling with one's neighbour), we should proceed to consider the activities by which a society of men really free is established, or by which some approach is made to its establishment ('really free,' in the sense of being enabled to make the most of their capabilities). These activities will take different forms under different social conditions, but in rough outline they are those by which men in mutual helpfulness conquer and adapt nature, and overcome the influences which would make them victims of chance and accident, of brute force and animal passion. The virtuous disposition displayed in these activities may have various names applied to it according to the particular direction in which it is exerted; 'industry,' 'courage,' 'public spirit.' A particular aspect of it was brought into relief among the Greeks under the name of ἀνδρεια. [1] The Greek philosophers already gave an extension to the meaning of this term beyond that which belonged to it in popular usage, and we might be tempted further to extend it so as to cover all the forms in which the habit of will necessary to the maintenance and furtherance of free society shows itself. The name, however, does not much matter. It is enough that there are specific modes of human activity which contribute directly to maintain a shelter for man's worthier energies against disturbance by natural forces and by the consequences of human fear and lust. The state of mind which appears in them may properly be treated as a special kind of virtue. It is true that the principle and the end of all virtues is the same. They are all determined by relation to social well-being as their final cause, and they all rest on a dominant interest in some form or other of that well-being; but as that interest may take different directions in different persons, as it cannot be equally developed at once in everyone, it may be said roughly that a man has one kind of virtue and not others.

[1] [Greek ἀνδρεια (andreia) = manliness Tr.]

249. As the kind of moral duties (in distinction from those obligations which are correlative to rights) which relate to the maintenance of free society and the disposition to fulfil those duties should form a special object of inquiry, so another special kind would be those which have to do with the management of property, with the acquisition and expenditure of wealth. To respect the rights of property in others, to fulfil the obligations correlative to those rights, is one thing; to make a good use of property, to be justly generous and generously just in giving and receiving, is another, and that may properly be treated as a special kind of virtue which appears in the duly blended prudence, equity, and generosity of the ideal man of business. Another special kind will be that which appears in family relations; where indeed that merely negative observance of right, which in other relations can be distinguished from the positive fulfilment of moral duties, becomes unmeaning. As we have seen, there are certain aggravations and perpetuations of wrong from which husband or wife or children can be protected by law, but the fulfilment of the claims which arise out of the marriage-tie requires a virtuous will in the active and positive sense--a will governed by unselfish interests--on the part of those concerned.

250. What is called 'moral sentiment' is merely a weaker form of that interest in social well-being which, when wrought into a man's habits and strong enough to determine action, we call virtue. So far as this interest is brought into play on the mere survey of action, and serves merely to determine an approbation or disapprobation, it is called moral sentiment. The forms of moral sentiment accordingly should be classified on some principle as forms of virtue, i.e. with relation to the social functions to which they correspond.

251. For the convenience of analysis, we may treat the obligations correlative to rights, obligations which it is the proper office of law to enforce, apart from moral duties and from the virtues which are tendencies to fulfil those duties. I am properly _obliged_ to those actions and forbearances which are necessary to the general freedom, necessary if each is not to interfere with the realisation of another's will. My _duty_ is to be interested positively in my neighbour's well-being. And it is important to understand that, while the enforcement of obligations is possible, that of moral duties is impossible. But the establishment of obligations by law or authoritative custom, and the gradual recognition of moral duties, have not been separate processes They have gone on together in the history of man. The growth of the institutions by which more complete equality of rights is gradually secured to a wider range of persons, and of those interests in various forms of social well-being by which the will is moralised, have been related to each other as the outer and inner side of the same spiritual development, though at a certain stage of reflection it comes to be discovered that the agency of force, by which the rights are maintained, is ineffectual for eliciting the moral interests. The result of the twofold process has been the creation of the actual content of morality; the articulation of the indefinite consciousness that there is something that should be--a true well-being to be aimed at other than any pleasure or succession of pleasures--into the sentiments and interests which form an 'enlightened conscience.' It is thus that when the highest stage of reflective morality is reached, and upon interests in this or that mode of social good there supervenes an interest in an ideal of goodness, that ideal has already a definite filling; and the man who pursues duty for duty's sake, who does good for the sake of being good or in order to realise an idea of perfection, is at no loss to say what in particular his duty is, or by what particular methods the perfection of character is to be approached.

SUPPLEMENT.

_Some Quotations rendered into English._

From Sect. 32. _Tractatus Politici_, II. 4 ('Per jus itaque'). 'By right of nature (natural right) I understand ... the actual power of nature.' 'Whatever an individual man does by the laws of his nature, that he does with the highest natural right, and his right towards nature goes just as far as his power holds out.'

'Jus naturae' = 'natural right.' 'Potentia' = 'power.' 'Jus' = 'right.' 'Jus humanum' = 'right of man,' or 'right _qua_ human.'

_Ib_. II. 5 ('Homines magis'). 'Human beings are led more by blind desire than by reason; and hence their natural power or right should be marked out not by reason but by any inclination by which they are determined to act, and by which they endeavour after their own preservation.'

'Jus civile' = 'civic right or law.'

_Ib_. II. 14 ('Quatenus homines'). 'In as far as human beings are troubled by anger, jealousy, or any emotion of hate, so far they are drawn in different directions and are antagonistic to one another, and therefore they are more to be feared in so far as they are more powerful, and more shrewd and astute, than the other animals; and because human beings are in the highest degree liable by nature to these emotions, therefore they are natural enemies (to one another).'

_Ib_. 15 ('Atque adeo'). 'And so we conclude that natural right can hardly be conceived unless where human beings have laws in common, (human beings) who have power at once to assert possession of the lands which they are able to inhabit and to till, and to defend themselves, and to repel all violence, and to live in accordance with the common sentiment of all. For (by art. 13 of this chapter) the more that thus come together into one, the more right they all together possess.'

_Ib_. 16 ('Ubi homines'). 'Where human beings have laws in common and all together are guided as by one mind, it is certain (by art. 13 of this chapter) that each of them has so much the less right as the rest are together more powerful than he; that is, that he in fact has no right over nature beyond that which the common (social) law concedes him. But whatever is enjoined upon him by common consent, he is bound to perform, or (by art. 4 of this chapter) he is compelled to it by law.'

_Ib_. 17 ('Hoc jus'). 'This law (or right), which is coextensive with the power of the plurality, is usually called 'imperium' ('authority,' 'government').

_Ib_. III. 2 ('Multitudinis quae'). 'Of a number or plurality, which is guided as if by a single mind.' 'Status civilis' = 'civic, or social, condition.'

_Ib_. III. 3 ('Homo ex legibus'). [In the civic condition as well as in the state of nature] 'man acts from the laws of his own nature and consults his own interest.' 'Sui juris' = 'in its own right,' 'autonomous.'

Sect. 33 (1). _Ib_. III. 7 ('Civitatis jus'). 'The right of the state is coextensive with the power of the plurality which is guided as if by one mind. But this oneness of minds is inconceivable, unless the state has for its main intention what sound reason shows to be for the interest of all men.'

(2). _Ib_. III. 8 ('Subditi eatenus'). 'Subjects are not in their own right, but under the right (or law) of the state, so far as they fear its power or threats, or so far as they love the social condition (by art. 10 of preceding chapter). From which it follows, that all those acts to which no one can be impelled by rewards or threats lie outside the right (or law) of the state.'

(3). _Ib_. III. 9 ('Ad civitatis jus'). 'That belongs to the right of the state in a less degree, which causes indignation in a greater number.' ('Sicut'). 'Like the individual citizen, or the man in a state of nature, the state is less in its own right in proportion as it has greater cause for fear.'

Sect. 34. _Ib_. III. 11 ('Nam quandoquidem'). 'For seeing that (by art. 2 of this chapter) the right of the supreme power is nothing but the actual right of nature, it follows that two governments are to one another as two men in the state of nature, except that the state can defend itself against external aggression in a way impossible for man in a state of nature, inasmuch as he is overcome daily by sleep, often by disease or distress, and in the end by old age, and besides this is exposed to other inconveniences, against which the state can protect itself.'

_Ib_. III. 13 ('Duae civitates'). 'Two states are natural enemies. For men in the state of nature are enemies. Those, therefore, who retain the right of nature, as not being in the same state, are enemies.'

_Ib_. III. 14 ('Nec dici potest'). 'Nor can it be said to act with craft or perfidy in that it dissolves its promise as soon as the cause of fear or hope is removed; because this condition was the same for both contracting parties, that whichsoever is first enabled to be free from fear should be in its own right, and should use its right according to the sentiment of its mind; and, moreover, because no one contracts for the future except on supposition of the circumstances under which he contracts.'

Sect. 35. _Ib_. II. 18 ('In statu'). 'In a state of nature there can be no transgression, or if one transgresses, he does so against himself, not against another; ... nothing is absolutely forbidden by the law of nature, except what no one has power to do.'

'Commune decretum' = 'the common (or social) behest.'

_Ib_. V. 1 ('Non id omne'). 'Not everything which we say is done rightfully, do we affirm to be the best to be done. It is one thing to till a field within your right, and another thing to till it in the best way; it is one thing, I say, to defend yourself, preserve yourself, give judgment &c. within your right, and another thing to do all these acts in the best way; and accordingly it is one thing to govern and manage a state within its rights, and another thing to do this in the best way. Thus, now that we have treated in general of the right of every state, it is time to treat of the best condition of every state.'

'Finis status civilis' = 'the end or aim of the civic or social condition.'

_Ib_. V. 2 ('Homines enim'). 'Men are not born of civic temper, but become so. Moreover, the natural dispositions of men are everywhere the same.'

_Ib_. V. 4 ('Pax enim'). 'Peace is not absence of war, but a virtue which arises from fortitude of mind; for obedience is a constant will to perform that which the common behest of the state requires to be done.'

_Ethics_, III. 59, Schol. (in footnote on preceding passage) ('Omnes actiones'). 'All the actions which follow from the affects which are related to the mind, in so far as it thinks, I ascribe to _fortitude_, which I divide into _strength of mind_ and _generosity_. By _strength of mind_ I mean the desire by which each person endeavours, from the dictates of reason alone, to preserve his own being. By _generosity_ I mean the desire by which, from the dictates of reason alone, each person endeavours to help other people and to join them to him in friendship.'

('Quae maxime'). 'Which is mainly coextensive with reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.'

('Quod multitudo libera'). [An authority which] 'a free plurality institutes, not one which is acquired against the plurality by the right of war.'

Sect. 36. 'Suum esse conservare' = 'to preserve his own being.'

'Homini nihil' = 'nothing is more useful to man, than man.'

'Homo namque.' See on sect. 32.

'Constans voluntas.' See on sect. 35.

'Vitam concorditer transigere' = 'to live in harmony.'

Footnote on 'Libera multitudo,' II. 11 ('Hominem eatenus'). 'The sense in which at all I call a man _free_ is in so far as he is guided by reason; because thus far he is determined to action by causes which can be adequately understood out of his nature alone, although by them he be necessarily determined to action. For freedom of action does not deny but affirms necessity.'

On Sect. 37. II. 15 ('Jus naturae'). See on sect. 32.

On Sect. 39. πόλις (polis) = state, including much that we mean by 'society.'

τέλος (telos) = end, aim, final cause.

πολίτης (polites) = citizen.

φύσει πολιτικός (phusei politikos) = social, or civic, by nature.

πολίτης μετέχει τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι (polites metechei) 'The citizen takes his share both in governing and in being governed.'

On Sect. 40. Footnote, _Eth_. IV. _Appendix_, xxxii ('Ea quae'). 'We shall bear with equanimity those things which happen to us contrary to what a consideration of our own profit demands, if we are conscious that we have performed our duty, that the power we have could not reach so far as to enable us to avoid those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow. If we clearly and distinctly understand this, the part of us which is determined by intelligence--that is to say, the better part of us--will be entirely satisfied therewith, and in that satisfaction will endeavour to persevere; for, in so far as we understand, we cannot desire anything excepting what is necessary, nor absolutely can we be satisfied with anything but the truth. Therefore, in so far as we understand these things properly will the efforts of the better part of us agree with the whole order of nature.' _Eth_. IV. _Preface_ ('Per bonum'). 'By good, therefore, I understand in the following pages everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us.... Again, I shall call men more or less perfect or imperfect in so far as they approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us.'

On Sect. 41. 'Nihil positivum in rebus in se consideratis' = 'nothing positive in things considered in themselves.'

In all the quotations from Spinoza's_ Ethics_ Mr. Hales White's translation has been followed.