Chapter LXXXVI: Section LXXXV: The Right Of Inheritance

The right of inheritance to resources has its origin in a combination of the idea of the family with the idea of property. And, indeed, this combination of ideas is a very natural one. The larger portion of mankind consider the pleasures of the family as the highest attainable, and endeavor, whenever their economic means make it at all possible, to secure them. At the same time, the selfishness of most men is not confined to their own persons, but extends also to their posterity. Hence it is that bed and board, _eonnubium_ and _commercium_, have, from time immemorial, been considered correlative ideas; and, to all the more logical socialists, a community of wives (or celibacy)(512) is as dear as a community of goods.(513) (§ 245.) And in practice, the greater number of nations of hunters, who, according to our conceptions, have no knowledge of a real family and no knowledge of property, have a custom of burying with the dead the things they used, to kill their cattle etc., or to deprive minor children of their inheritance.(514)