Duties of Justice

a) Duties Regarding Our Neighbor’s Body

As every man has the duty of preserving bodily life and health and integrity of members, so he has the right to freedom from human interference in the discharge of this duty. In other words, each man has the duty of respecting the life and health and bodily integrity of his fellowmen. Hence, man cannot unjustly kill his neighbor, he cannot maim or mutilate him, he cannot break down his health, he cannot unjustly confine or imprison or enslave him. These prohibitions give a summary of our negative duties with regard to our neighbor’s body and bodily life. The chief of these duties is that expressed in the prohibition of killing, or homicide; the other prohibitions follow as corollaries from this. Hence we shall deal in detail with the subject of homicide. Homicide is the unjust killing of a human being by private authority and without the justification of necessary self-defence. It comes under the prohibition of the natural law, and therefore is never licit in any circumstances. As suicide is wrong because it is an offence against God, against society, and against the suicide himself, so homicide is wrong because it offends God, injures society, and violates the right of the victim. For consider: homicide usurps the unique rule which God holds over the life and death of His children. Further, it removes an integral member of society; it arouses fear among men, and so destroys the peace and sense of security to which men have a right, and which are needed for the proper conduct of social life and for prosperity. Finally, homicide violates the right to life which the victim possesses with regard to all other men, even though he has not the right to life with reference to God. Thus we see that homicide is not only forbidden by the divine positive law of the Fifth Commandment, but also by the natural law. Man has rights—with reference to other men—to life, bodily integrity, and health. Hence, a right is violated and the natural law outraged if these goods are taken away or harmed. It follows that harmful bodily acts less grave than homicide are also forbidden. Thus it is against the natural law to wound, mutilate, or strike one’s neighbor. Thus, too, parents and superiors offend against the natural law if they fail to provide the necessary food, clothing, and care for those under their charge. Physicians, too, offend against the natural law by undertaking the treatment of serious maladies of the nature of which they are culpably ignorant; and so do surgeons who perform operations without accurate knowledge and requisite skill. Merchants offend against the natural law, who adulterate foodstuffs with substances harmful to human health. ‘Going back now to the matter of taking a neighbor’s life, we consider the case of necessary self-defence. The fact that a man has the right to life and the duty to exercise ordinary care in its preservation implies the further fact that he has the right to defend his life against unjust attack. The principle in the matter may be expressed as follows: It is lawful to defend one’s life against unjust attack even at the cost of the life of the aggressor, provided there is nothing inordinate in the time or the manner in which the fatal defensive act is performed. We must study this principle in detail: i. The attack must be unjust, i. e., it must come from the private authority of the attacker, or of other private citizens, and not from justly constituted civil authority. Hence a criminal who is about to be executed by public authority would not be allowed to kill his executioner on the plea of selfdefence. ii. The attack must be of a serious nature, one that involves danger to life or limb. A man set upon by an enemy, who evidently intends merely to strike him, is justified in repelling force with force, but not in killing his aggressor. iii. There must be nothing inordinate in the time at which the fatal act of defence is performed. If I know that a certain man has threatened to kill me on sight, and know further that he will keep his word, I am not thereby justified in seeking him out and killing him before he has an opportunity to attack me. Such an act would be plain homicide. Nor may I kill one who has murderously attacked me, after I have escaped from the danger, or even as I lie in the death throes. Such an act would be one of vengeance, and would also be homicide. It is plain, then, that the act of self-defence which involves the taking of an aggressor’s life must be performed at the moment of the attack or during its continuance, and neither before nor after the attack itself. iv. There must be nothing inordinate in the manner in which the fatal act of self-defence is performed. Thus a person attacked must do no more in the way of violence than is requisite and sufficient for preserving life. If the person unjustly attacked can save himself by running away, or by crying for help, or by lightly wounding the aggressor, he is bound to take such means and is not justified in killing the aggressor. ‘We have stated and explained man’s right to selfdefence when unjustly attacked. But how prove that which we have asserted and explained? The proof rests upon a principle studied in General Ethics (Chap. I, Art. 2, b), which may be called the Principle of the Twofold Effect of an Act not Evil in Itself. The student is urged to turn back and read the paragraph indicated. Here we may present but a summary proof of our principle of self-defence at the cost of the aggressor’s life: In repelling unjust aggression, which can be withstood only by killing the aggressor, a man aims directly at saving his own life. That is his direct end and purpose. Indirectly he causes the death of the aggressor; but he does not directly intend that death. He does not kill as a means to self-preservation; he preserves himself, and through his efforts in that direction, his aggressor is killed. Thus we have the matter: An act good in itself, viz., the act of defending one’s rights. And we have a twofold effect, one good, viz., life preserved, and one bad, viz., the aggressor’s death. Now it is lawful to perform an act (indifferent or good in itself) from which such a twofold effect comes provided, (1) the evil effect does not precede the good effect; (2) there is a reason proportionately grave calling for the act in its good effect; and (3) the end of the agent is honest. These conditions are verified in the case here considered, for (1) the death of the aggressor does not precede the safety of the person attacked: it either occurs simultaneously with the escape to safety, or follows it; (2) the right to selfpreservation, the right to life, is a reason very grave, and is proportioned to the situation in which the outcome is to be the loss of life on the one hand or the other; (3) the end of the agent is honest, for the agent directly intends to save himself, even though self-preservation be accompanied by the death of the aggressor. It is clear, then, that a man has the right to defend his life against unjust attack even at the expense of the aggressor’s death. But has he the duty of so defending himself? No, unless his life be necessary to others (wife and children, for example), to whom he would do an injury by allowing himself to be killed. He is bound to take ordinary care of life and health, but self-preservation at the cost of such effort as involves an aggressor’s death is extraordinary, and therefore not obligatory. It may even be that the higher good for a man attacked lies in permitting himself to be killed, rather than kill another. Thus a man in the state of grace might well allow himself to be killed rather than cut off the aggressor in the very act of sin. One who so nobly sacrifices himself is a hero, and while he is not bound to such heroism, it is surely reasonable and permissible. The right to life is not the only right that may lawfully be defended, even if the defence involves an aggressor’s death. Public security demands that men be permitted so to defend their very valuable goods, the integrity of their members, their personal virtue, their individual liberty against one who would take them into slavery, etc. The reason for this is obvious from what has been said above. Public security and the intrinsic value of the goods defended make the reason for the fatal act of defence sufficiently grave. The other requisite conditions are present also, as in the case of defending one’s life, viz., the evil effect of the act of defence does not precede the good effect so as to be a means thereto, and the end of the agent is honest. Before leaving the present discussion of duties respecting life, it may be well to say a word on dueling. A duel is a privately arranged combat with deadly weapons. It is entirely against the natural law, for it involves in itself the malice of both homicide and suicide. It involves the malice of homicide, for it is a privately authorized attack upon the life of another; and it has the malice of suicide, for the duelist exposes his life to danger without reasonable and just cause. The Catholic Church has wisely placed the ban of her excommunication upon those of her members who fight duels, promote them, act as seconds to duelists, or deliberately witness a duel.

b) Duties Regarding Our Neighbor’s Soul

The faculties of soul are intellect and will. The intellect seeks, and has a right to, the truth; the will inclines to, and has a right to, goodness. Hence, no man may lawfully withhold the truth which his neighbor has a right to know, nor may he deprive the neighbor of the good which he has a duty to achieve. Against the duty of truthfulness man offends by lying. Against the duty of goodness man offends by scandal, and by imposing servitude which tends to destroy human personality and hampers the liberty necessary for the free and proper quest of good. The illicit character of scandal and servitude is obvious, and needs no special study here. We must discuss the matter of truthfulness, however, and we shall do this negatively by studying and proving the intrinsic evil of lying. A lie is a serious statement at variance with the knowledge or belief of the speaker. It is a disagreement between what one says and what one knows, or thinks one knows. It differs from a mere error (called a material lie, although strictly it is not a lie at all), which is a sincere statement of a mistaken mind. Thus, one may affirm something as true, and with the sincere conviction that it is true, while as a-matter of fact it is false; and, conversely, one may sincerely declare something to be false which is really true. This material falsity is not the falsity of a lie. The formal falsity of a lie consists in its disagreement with the mind of the speaker. Some persons describe a lie as “a statement of an untruth uttered with intent to deceive.” This is no true definition. The intention to deceive does not belong to the essence of a lie; such an intention merely gives the lie a certain “perfection,” as St. Thomas £ w. , … 7 says. Granted that such an intention is usually present in the teller of lies, it is not an essential element of the lie itself. Thus, if the fabled office-boy invents the excuse of “attending his grandmother’s funeral” for the purpose of getting an afternoon’s pleasure at the ball-park, he is telling a lie, even though he knows quite well that his employer is not to be deceived by his well-worn story, and hence does not intend to deceive him. There are three types of lies: (1) The jocose lie, a fallacious statement made “for fun” and understood, or easily understandable, as a joke. This lie does not square with the definition of lie, because it is not a serious statement. However, there is such a thing as a joke “going too far”; and a jocose lie that is not easily understood in true character may become a real lie. (2) The officious lie, which is a lie of excuse or convenience. It is a cowardly refusal to meet the issues of life; it is the mark of a weak, unmanly, crawling soul. It is a full and formal lie, and has all the malice of perfect mendacity. (3) The pernicious lie, which is a lie meant to do mischief or injury. It is the lowest and worst of lies. Together with the lie proper we associate all outward evidences or signs which falsify one’s inner knowledge, condition, or spirit; and thus we condemn with lies: simulation or pretence, hypocrisy, adulation or flattering speech or conduct. The sound ethical doctrine in the matter of lies is summed up in the following principle: A lie is intrinsically evil, and can never, under any circumstances, be considered lawful. A lie is intrinsically evil, that is, evil in itself. This is evident from the fact that a lie as such is an injury to right reason, to our neighbor, and to society at large. A lie outrages right reason because it upsets the due order of nature; it is the prostitution of speech which is given to men for the purpose of expressing what their minds hold as true. A lie is an injury to our neighbor who, while he has no strict right to know all that is in our minds, has a right not to be deceived. In just this way our neighbor has a right, not to all the money in our pocket, but to payment of what is due him, in good coin, not counterfeits Finally, a lie is an injury to society, for society cannot exist without mutual faith and reliance among its members; and if a lie be permissible, such faith and confidence become an utter impossibility. It is never permissible, then, to lie. But it may well be permissible to conceal the truth. Concealing the truth is just as different from lying as the act of refraining from purchasing goods is different from paying out counterfeit money. No one is obliged to buy; what he is obliged to do is to pay for his purchases with good money. So no one is obliged to open his mind and pour out a continuous declaration of all he knows; what he is obliged to do is to avoid lies when he does speak. Thus, as long as concealing the truth does not involve an indirect lie, and does not injure the right of another to know the truth, and there is a good reason for such concealment— so long the concealment of truth is perfectly lawful. Indeed, concealment of the truth is sometimes a strict duty, as, for example, in the keeping of secrets. One of the means of concealing truth is the socalled mental reservation. A mental reservation is a restriction placed upon the sense of a statement, so that this statement is true only when understood according to the mind of the speaker. In other words, a mental reservation is a reserving of the meaning of one’s statement (in which a double meaning can be discerned) to apply only to one sense, and that the less natural and obvious sense, of the words spoken. There are two types of such reservation, viz., the mental reservation strictly so called, and the mental reservation loosely so-called. In the former, the hearer is given no real clue to the true sense in which the words of a statement are used. Such a reservation is, therefore, to all intents and purposes, a lie; for the hearer is not given an opportunity to adjudge the statement as anything other than a serious expression of the speaker’s mind. Thus mental reservation strictly so called is never permissible. But when there is a good reason for concealment or secrecy, the second type of reservation, viz., reservation loosely so called, may be used. For this consists in the use of a statement of ambiguous or “double” meaning which the hearer can—from the words, manner, or circumstances in which it is uttered— readily understand as being employed in the less obvious and natural sense. Whether, as a matter of fact, the hearer does so understand it, does not enter into the question. A normally intelligent person could so understand it, and in this lies its permissibility. For, even if deception in the hearer actually results from such a statement, this is an evil effect indirectly willed of an act licit in itself (for the statement is not a lie), and performed for a reason proportionately or properly grave. It is supposed, of course, that the end of the agent is honest; that is to say, the speaker must directly intend to conceal the truth, not to deceive the hearer. However, if the hearer has a right to know the full truth, a right which concealment would violate, the mental reservation loosely so called becomes illicit. Similarly, it becomes illicit if there is not a sufficient reason for concealment. Those that find they must occasionally resort to licit reservation are, above others, priests, doctors, diplomatists, and other professional men. All the world knows that the seal of the confessional is inviolable, and if a priest should be put on the witness stand in court and questioned about a matter of which he has only “confessional knowledge,” he would answer, “I do not know.” This statement has two meanings: an obvious meaning, “I really do not know,” and a less obvious meaning, “I do not know for publication; I am not free to tell.” From the fact that the witness is a priest, this second meaning would, or easily might, be taken from his words. Here we have an example of licit reservation (loosely so called), for the statement is not in itself a lie (it has two meanings easily understood), there is a grave reason for concealment, and the intention of the agent is honest, for he merely intends to keep his sacred secret and does not directly intend to practise deception.—Another example of reservation is found in the words of the housemaid to an unwelcome caller, “My mistress is not at home.” This expression has two meanings: the obvious meaning, “My mistress is really not at home,” and the less obvious meaning (but one easily understood from the circumstances, and from the ordinary use of this phrase by those who wish to avoid an interruption of their privacy), viz., “My mistress is not at home to callers,” or, “She is not at home to you.” In addition to reservation there is another common means of concealing truth, and this is called evasion or equivocation. This consists in avoiding the direct answer to a question, and making a noncommital reply. It is in no sense a form of lying, but a kindly way of sparing the feelings of our neighbor when a full and direct answer would wound him. Thus, Jones, who abhors the country, is asked by Smith to give an opinion of the latter’s place in the remote suburbs. Jones answers, “You must find the rural life interesting,” Jones tells no lie, and Smith is pleased. Were Jones to say, “I don’t like it here,” he would merely show himself to be one of that abhorred class of “candid” people who seem to take delight in saying things that hurt, and then explaining that they are straightforward persons who always speak the truth. To sum up: It is never lawful to tell a lie, no matter what great good would come of it; for a lie is intrinsically evil. It is licit to conceal the truth when the hearer has no right to know the truth and when there is a sufficient reason for the concealment. *

Closely associated with goods of the soul to which everyone has a right—a right that cannot be violated without offending against the law of nature—are the external goods called good name and honor. Good name is the reputation one bears among others for uprightness and honesty. “Good name is better than great riches.” It is of inestimable value in the making of friends, the establishing of credit, and the promoting of business. Hence good name is to be classed with those goods that a man rightfully seeks to acquire and to preserve. The ethical principle in the matter is: Every man has a right to his good name. Good name is “the immediate jewel of the soul”; it is a thing acquired and owned; to steal it is to commit an act of injustice which demands reparation and restitution in so far as this may be possible. Good name in others is injured by rash and suspicious judgment, by calumny or slander, and by detraction. These evils are, therefore, contrary to natural law. Honor is the natural or official dignity of a person which rightfully calls for esteem, respect, or consideration on the part of others. The ethical principle in the matter is: Every man has the right to that honor :which is normally due to his nature and position. This is a natural right, for it concerns a matter which is of importance and advantage to a man in achieving and in tending towards his last end. Respect for our fellowmen as men, and respect for superiors in the measure required by their place and dignity, is an absolute requirement for harmonious and profitable existence in private life and in society. Therefore, to injure a man in point of honor is to offend against the natural law by an act of injustice which requires due requital or reparation in as far as this is possible. Honor is injured by disrespect, mockery, derision, caricature, contempt, scornful insolence, etc.

C) DUTIES REGARDING OUR NEIGHBOR’S PROPERTY

Under this head we are to consider the following matters: i. The Right of Ownership ii. Erroneous Theories about Ownership iii. The Acquiring and Transferring of Ownership i. The Right of Ownership.—The right of ownership, or property right, is the right of disposing of property at will and of excluding other men from its use or disposition. By property is meant any external goods that are capable of distribution among men to serve their utility. In the main, these are material or bodily goods. And these are divided into movables and immovables according as they can or cannot be transferred from place to place without injury to their substance: thus, animals and furniture belong to the first class, while lands, houses, etc., belong to the second. Movable goods are distinguished as fungible and non-fungible, according as they can take the place of other goods of the same kind, or are incapable of such substitution: thus, goods that can be borrowed and returned in kind, like a pound of sugar or a measure of corn, are fungible; while goods that must be returned in proper identity, such as a borrowed horse, are n&n-fungible. Goods are also distinguished as fruitful (productive) and consumptible, according as they produce new goods, or are consumed or destroyed by their use: thus, a field is productive, while food is consumptible. Ownership of goods involves the right to use or dispose of them at will. Thus, an owner has the right to sell his property, to give it away, to change it, or to destroy it. In all this, however, the collision of rights (cf. this Book, Chap. I, Art. i, c, iii) is to be taken into account, and it is understood that the right ceases if its exercise would violate the rights of others or the common welfare. Ownership of goods is exclusive. The owner has the right to refuse to other men the use and disposition of his property. The right of ownership belongs to a person, whether this be a physical person (i. e., an individual human being), or a moral or juridical person (i. e., a unified group acting as one, such as Church, State, community, corporation). Ownership is private if the person in whom it is vested is a physical person; corporate, if vested in a moral person. There is also a form of ownership called public, and this is the right of the civil power, the State, to use the property of private citizens, even without their consent, when public necessity or great utility requires such use. This right is called the right of eminent domain. Thus, for example, the State may build a public road through a farmer’s field, even though the farmer is unwilling and refuses to sell the field. Thus, too, the State, in times of war, may commandeer privately owned commodities. This is not the right of ownership strictly so called, for the State has not the right to dispose at will of the property of citizens, and is ordinarily required to indemnify the citizen whose prop- erty is taken over by the right of eminent domain. That the State has the true right to make proper use of its eminent domain is clear from the fact that the public welfare is of a higher or more universal order than private ownership of material goods, and when these two rights collide, the greater prevails. The right of ownership is a natural right. Man has the natural right to preserve life, and he cannot properly preserve life without private ownership of property; hence, the natural right to own property is a corollary of the natural right to life. Why cannot man preserve life without owning property? Because the proper conservation of life not only involves the use of food and clothing and shelter necessary for the hour or the day, but it involves a permanent and stable title to these things; for a man must provide for the future, for times of ill-health, unemployment, age; he must provide for those dependent upon him, or those to become dependent, and have a stable and permanent means of caring for such dependents. All this is saying that man cannot fulfill the requirements of normal life unless he has the right to own (i. e., permanently to possess for his own use and disposition) the goods called private property. We conclude that the right of ownership is a natural right, that is, a right which is founded upon the natural law. ’ Again: the right of ownership is a natural right because, without it, man cannot exercise properly his natural right to perfect his powers. If a man cannot earn anything to have and to hold as his own, where will he find inspiration and incentive for work, for study, for the development of his rational faculties? And where will he find the independence required for study and research? If the right of ownership perishes, progress in the arts and sciences must perish with it. Further: the right of ownership is a natural right because man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor. Man (under God) owns his own bodily and mental powers. With these powers he perfects objects. In perfecting objects, man, in a true sense, projects into them something of his own personality, something of himself. Hence, to take away these objects from man is to take away, so to speak, part of himself, an action clearly contrary to natural law. Therefore, to deny the right of private ownership is to come in conflict with the natural law. Let this matter be illustrated: Suppose a man works in his garden. His work is truly something of his own, and it is as truly something given to the garden and henceforth inseparable from it. Man’s work gives to the garden a fruitfulness it did not have; for his labor removed choking weeds, loosened soil for the ready admission of moisture, supplied the chemicals necessary for fertilization, killed the insects that would harm or destroy the yield. Hence the man has put something of his own, something even of him- self, into the garden. To say that he does not, or cannot, own the garden is to say that he does not or cannot, own what is indubitably his, and what he has put into the garden and is now inseparable from it. This is wholly unjust. Therefore it is unjust, and contrary to natural law, to deny the possibility of man’s ownership in the garden. It does not follow, of course, that because a man works upon a plot of ground, he owns the ground. We presuppose the original title by which the man holds the garden as his own, and of the validity of this title we shall soon speak. But even if a man works in a neighbor’s property, he will work for wages or as a kindness, and so by a wage-contract or a gift-contract he. will transfer to his neighbor his natural right to the fruit of that labor; for that which he has given to the land he will accept what is adjudged an equivalent—money, or the sense of well-doing (and the spiritual merit for a life hereafter) in the interests of a fellow-man.

ii. Erroneous Theories about Ownership—The theories which deny or limit the right of private ownership are, in general, communistic theories, and they may be called, collectively, Communism. Communism denies private and individual or limits ownership, and asserts common ownership of property. Communism has several forms, and of these the most notable are Anarchism and Socialism.

Anarchism holds that all productive goods (lands, mines, machines, etc.) must be seized by force and given into the permanent ownership of independent bands or companies of workmen, and all State authority is to be utterly destroyed. Socialism holds that all productive goods should be owned by the State, and to this end men must work, not by the violent means of seizure and destruction, but by political action and legislation. We shall treat of Socialism in some detail. Socialism has two chief forms, Democratic (or Industrial) Socialism, and Agrarian Socialism. Of the first form, the chief exponent is Karl Marx (1818-1883), and this form of Socialism is often referred to as Marxian Socialism, or Marxian Collectivism. Of the second form, two notable exponents are Henry George (1839-1897) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Democratic Socialism (Marxian Socialism, Industrial Socialism, Collectivism) may be defined as a system of political economy which makes all means of production common property, places it permanently in the possession of the democratic State, and leaves to the State the care of organizing collective production and the distribution of riches. We see, then, what Socialism of this type aims to do: (1) To dispossess individual owners of productive goods —buildings, machines, factories, lands, raw materials—and to make these the inalienable property of civil society; (2) To make civil society a purely democratic State in which there will be no special privileges or social inequalities; (3) To keep all legislative and judicial rights in the hands of the people, who will exercise their control by direct suffrage. Agrarian Socialism would not have the State own all means of production, but only the land and the soil, and would leave other productive goods available for private ownership. Socialism is proposed as a remedy for the hardship and injustice of the conditions ordinarily imposed upon workingmen. It regards private property, private ownership, particularly in productive goods, as the root of all such hardship and injustice. But in this it is wrong. Socialism would not improve the condition of the ordinary workman, but would make it immeasurably worse. This is obvious if we contrast the workman’s present condition with that which Socialism promises him. As things are, the workman is paid for his work, and his wages are his own to use as he likes. If the workman is sober and honest, he will usually be able to save at least a little of his earnings, and so to work towards bettering his condition, gaining a greater and greater independence for himself and his dependents, and, in some cases, will be enabled to establish a business of his own. Now Socialism would take all this opportunity away from the workman; it would allow him no salary; it would give him a place fixed and permanent which would admit of no improvement, no enlargement of opportunity for independence and ease of life; it would stifle worthy ambition and kill all incentive to excel; it would make the workman a veritable cog in a machine; it would make the State an impersonal and heartless owner of its very citizens ; it would turn the workman into a State slave. Thus, granting that the workman is often badly used and underpaid (evils that are indeed unjust), Socialism would use him in a manner unbearably worse. Hence, Socialism is to be rejected as inept, that is, as a theory that can in no wise work out as it promises and seeks to do. Further, Socialism is unjust. We have seen that the right of ownership is a natural right; and this right Socialism violates. Even Agrarian Socialism is unjust, for, as Pope Leo XIII points out in his famous Encyclical on the Conditions of Labor, “Man … the master of his own acts … governs himself by foresight under the eternal law and power of God… . Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only on things which regard his present welfare, but also on those which will be for his advantage in time to come. Hence man not only can possess the fruits of the earth, but the soil itself, for of the products of the earth he has to lay up provision for the future. Man’s needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied to-day, they demand new supplies to-morrow. Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that is unfailing in supplying his daily wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.” Man cannot be forced to turn to the State as his “storehouse,” for man is older than the State, and held private property, in goods productive as well as non-productive, before the State existed. The State, therefore, cannot come into possession of man’s rights in these goods without the unjust act of taking them away from man whose possession and title to them is prior to any claim of the State. Hence, Socialism is a theory which stands in disagreement with the natural law, and is to be condemned as unlawful. Finally, Socialism is a theory subversive of peace and morals. It would lead, if put into practice: (1) To violent upheavals and disturbances occasioned by the change of social order and the seizure of private property; (2) To a hard and odious slavery of men by forcing all to accept imposed labor without any choice as to its kind or conditions, without any direct return for, or control over the fruits of labor, and without an alternative of refusal or acceptance in the distribution of commodities produced by labor; (3) To hatred and envy among men because of the assignment of some to agreeable, and some to distasteful and even odious tasks; (4) To a general laziness and indifference by killing the incentive for individual excellence in quantity and quality of goods produced; (5) To dire poverty and “an equality of misery” which would necessarily be produced by the “drying up of the springs of riches” through the state of affairs brought about by the causes enumerated above, viz., social discord, the dead numbness of slavery, evil passions rampant among workmen, general laziness, and indifference. Thus would Socialism ruin peace among men and the social virtues, and consequently it is to be condemned as subversive of peace and morals. To sum up: Socialism is futile as a means of bettering the conditions of workmen. These conditions, as Christian Sociology and Economics demonstrate, are to be bettered; but Socialism would make them worse. Socialism is unjust, and falls under the prohibition of the natural law. Finally, Socialism is impossible of execution, for it would lead to disturbances that would ruin society itself; and on this score also it is opposed to the natural law.

iii. The Acquiring and Transferring of Ownership—Man acquires property rights, or ownership of private property, first of all by occupation of property which does not belong to anybody else, and, secondarily, by receiving property by way of lawful transfer from the owner. The most ordinary form of transfer is the contract. We are here to study (i) the acquiring of property by occupation and associated modes of acquisition, and (2) the transferring of property by contracts.

1. Ownership in private property is acquired by first occupation. By occupation is meant the taking possession of something capable of being privately owned and which does not belong to another person. This mode of acquiring ownership is valid, although it can be employed very little at the present day, when nearly all the property available upon earth is in the hands of lawful owners. That first occupation is a lawful and valid mode of acquiring ownership is almost self-evident; and it is admitted by all except the Communists, whose doctrines we have already shown to be contrary to natural law: for we have proved Socialism fallacious and unlawful, and Socialism is but a modified form of pure Communism. Still, it is distinctly in order to present a concise proof of the validity of occupation as a mode of acquiring ownership. We have proved that man has the right of private ownership by the natural law. But such a right would be illusory if first occupation were not a valid title for ownership: for man may acquire ownership by purchase or gift or other contract from the present owner; and the present owner might have acquired his property in the same way from the former owner; and the former might have so acquired it from a previous owner; and so on; but one must come at last to a first owner, who could not have acquired it from another because another did not own it: and so the right (natural to man) of ownership could never have been established at all if first occupation did not establish it. Therefore, first occupation is a valid mode of acquiring ownership. Besides first occupation there are other modes of acquiring ownership, and the most notable of these are: finding, accession, and prescription. Finding of lost articles entitles the finder to appropriate and own them if the true owner cannot he discovered by an effort proportioned to the value of the articles. Hidden treasure found without clue to the true owner, and goods left by intestate persons who die without natural heirs, are disposed of according to the laws of the country in which such goods exist.—Accession is an increase of property already owned, and a valid title to the ownership of the newly added property. Thus, if I own a piece of land on a river’s bank, and the land is extended by alluvial deposits, the newly formed soil is mine by title of accession; thus, too, the young of cattle and poultry belong by title of accession to the owner of the parent animals and fowls. Again, if a neighbor builds on my ground, and so improves my property, the improvement is mine by accession. Out of the last case disputed claims may emerge; and these are to be settled by civil law. Prescription is a title to ownership based on the undisputed and uninterrupted possession of property which the holder honestly believes to be his own (although as a fact it is not) for a period of time fixed by law. The common good requires that this title be valid when due conditions are fulfilled; else there would be no tranquil possession of one’s own property, for trickery could easily dispossess a man of his established rights. Thus, if my home has been “in the family” for generations, and now it is discovered for the first time that my great-grandfather’s title to the property was not “clear,” the right of prescription would make me the lawful and true owner and would rule out the ancient claim as unreasonable and “outlawed.” Thus, too, if a public path across a certain field has been used for many years (the number to be set by law) without any complaint or hindrance on the part of the owner of the field, it becomes public property by prescription, and the owner of the field can no longer close the path. The conditions requisite for the validity of prescription as a title to ownership are summed up in the following jingle:

Fit goods; good faith; a title, too; Due time—the thing belongs to you.

To explain: Fit goods, i. e., the property must be such as can be lawfully acquired and owned by a private person. Good faith, i. e., the person holding the property must honestly think that it is his own during the whole time required for the prescription. A title, i. e., an apparently valid basis for the holder’s good faith. Due time, i. e., an uninterrupted term of years

(the number being fixed by civil law) of undisputed possession.

2. A transfer of ownership in property is lawfully effected by valid contract. A contract is an agreement between two (or more) persons which begets an obligation in one or both contractors. Thus, a man hires a servant. The agreement of both centers upon the work to be done. The man agrees to pay for the work, the servant, to do the work. Thus, we have a contract, and one which lays an obligation upon both contractors, or, as they are called, both parties to the contract. For a contract to be valid, to be a true contract, the following requirements are essential:

The matter apt; the persons fit; Consent, and formal note of it.

To explain: The matter apt, i. e., one must not, and cannot, contract to do what is physically or morally impossible, or what is unlawful. The persons fit, i. e., the parties to the contract must be of suitable age (not infants or minors indicated as such by pertinent law) and must have the right freely to dispose of the matter contracted for. Consent, i. e., that is the parties must agree fully, freely, truly, and mutually, and must manifest this agreement by external sign. Formal note, i. e., a suitable document which follows the form of contract required by civil law; for without this formal expression the contract would hardly be recognized as such in a court of law. A special word must be said on the matter of consent. As we have stated, this must be full, free, true, and mutual. For such consent freedom is requisite in the contracting parties, and for freedom, knowledge. Freedom is not destroyed, but it is affected, by fear, and contracts procured under duress (i. e., under threat which excites fear) are often void or voidable in civil law. Knowledge is balked by ignorance or error. If one who makes a contract is ignorant of the matter contracted for, he is incapable of true consent, and hence there is no contract. If one is in error about the substance of the thing contracted for, or about the actual terms of the contract itself, the error is substantial, and the contract is void. Error about unimportant qualities of the thing contracted for does not affect the contract; and such error is called accidental. But if error is the result of misrepresentation or fraud, the party guilty of the misrepresentation or fraud must release the other from the contract—for the natural law forbids any man to take benefit from an act of his own which does and perpetuates an injury to another. If a man mistakenly misrepresents a matter contracted for, his misrepresentation is innocent; nevertheless he is bound to release the party injured by the misrepresentation, and to restore whatever benefit he has received by reason of the misrepresentation. If a man fraudulently misrepresents a matter contracted for, he is bound to release the party injured by fraud, and to make full restitution for such injury, whether he has received any benefit or not. Let us consider some examples: A man buys what he believes to be wine, stating his order for wine; and when the goods are delivered he finds vinegar in the bottles. The sales-contract is void, for the error is substantial.—A man buys wine, expecting it to be delivered in quart bottles; but it is delivered in litre bottles, five to the gallon. The contract stands, for the error is accidental.—A man buys wine, stating plainly that he must have it in quarts, and that he would not enter upon the contract unless it is to be had in quarts. This makes the mere accident of the size of bottles a necessary condition, and so renders what is itself accidental a matter of the substance of the contract. If the bottles are found upon delivery to be litre bottles, the contract is void, and the purchaser is free to refuse the delivery.—Again: A salesman offers cloth for sale. The purchaser thinks it is good linen, although the salesman says nothing about the kind or quality of the cloth, but simply shows it and states the price. The sale is effected. Later the purchaser finds the cloth is not linen, and goes to the salesman to demand restitution. Here the purchaser is in the wrong. The contract stands. For the salesman showed cloth, nothing more. The purchaser mistakenly thought the cloth was linen, and a good bargain at the price offered. But that mistake was the purchaser’s fault. The contract really was for “this cloth;” and “this cloth” was duly delivered upon payment of the price; and so the contract was forever closed.—A salesman mistakenly offers a cotton mixture as linen, and the purchaser pays for it as linen. The purchaser is a dressmaker, and she uses the cloth to make garments which she represents to a customer as linen. The customer finds out that the garments are not linen at all. The dressmaker’s reputation suffers; she loses many customers. She has recourse to the salesman who sold her the cloth. He is bound to restore to her the extra price he received from her in the first instance, that is, he is bound to restore the benefit that accrued to him through the selling of cotton goods as linen. There, however, his obligation ends. But if the salesman was fraudulent, if he deliberately represented as linen what he knew to be an inferior cloth, then he is bound to make restitution for all that the dressmaker suffered by reason of the fraud, that is, the payment of an unjust price in the first purchase, and the loss of customers and reputation. There are several varieties of contracts, and the most important distinctions are: The unilateral contract, which begets an obligation in one party only: such, for example, is a promise. The bilateral contract begets an obligation in both parties: such, for example, is a wage-contract, for in this the employer is obligated to pay wages, and the employee is obligated to do a certain work. Again we have the gratuitous and the onerous contract: in the former only one party receives a benefit (such, for example, is a promise, a gift, a loan); in the latter both parties receive a benefit (such, for example, is the contract between buyer and seller, between lessor and lesseeA … The important ethical doctrine on contracts is this: A contract is a valid mode of transferring property. We have already seen that the right of ownership is a natural right. Ownership gives to the lawful owner the faculty of lawfully disposing of his property at will, provided no injury is done to his neighbor or to the community at large. Therefore, a man may dispose of his property by contract, if he choose, provided there is no injury done to his neighbor or to the common welfare. But if a man may lawfully dispose of his goods by contract, it follows that the persons to* whom he transfers it may lawfully acquire and own it. Hence, contract is a lawful and valid means of transferring ownership. From all that we have said about ownership, it follows that injuries against the right and fact of ownership, or against valid modes of acquiring it, or against lawful modes of transferring it, are injuries against justice which demand equal restoration or restitution. Such injuries are, for example, theft, wilful damage, noxious trespass, fraud and its evil effects. A final word must be said about the contract known as last will and testament. Like other contracts, this is a valid means of disposing of property. It is the right of an owner to transfer his goods by last will and testament, and this is not a civil, but a natural right. The civil law may, and should, determine the formalities of willing, and arrange the disposal of the property of a man who dies intestate (i. e., without having made a will), but the right of willing itself comes from the natural law. A man may leave his property to others of his choice, provided he does not thereby effect an injury. Such an injury would be effected if a man left his natural heirs destitute and bequeathed all his property to others. In such a case, the natural right of the heirs would prevail, and the will (with due process of civil law, as required for the common welfare) would be set aside.

Summary of the Article

In this very lengthy Article we have considered the goods of life and body, the goods of soul, the goods of reputation and honor, and the goods of fortune, which our neighbor possesses, or may lawfully possess, and with regard to which we have special obligations. Goods of life and body: We have seen that homicide is always contrary to the natural law, as is all injury to body, health, limb, and personal physical liberty. We have studied the peculiar and precise circumstances in which it becomes lawful to take the life of another. Goods of soul: We have seen that scandal and enslavement are contrary to the natural law as contravening our neighbor’s rights of will; and that his rights of intellect are outraged by lying. We have justified the principle that a lie is never lawful. We have seen that the concealment of the truth, which involves no lying, is licit and, in certain circumstances, a duty owed in charity. Goods of reputation and honor: We have stated and proved that man has a right to his good name, and to the honor regularly due to his nature and position; we have seen these rights to be based upon the natural law. Goods of fortune: We have learned that the right of ownership is a natural right, and that the doctrines which limit or deny this right are fallacious and unjust. Of such doctrines, we have singled out Socialism for special study. We have discussed the valid modes by which property is acquired (occupation, finding, accession, prescription), and the modes by which property is lawfully transferred from one owner to another (contracts). We have made a brief study of the contract known as the last will and testament.