With the duty relating to the property of others, are connected as corollaries, the duties relating to the observance of agreements or contracts; the transmission of property in society being not always done from hand to hand, but by means of promises and writings. To fail in keeping one’s promise, to pervert the sense of solemn contracts, is, on the one side, to appropriate other people’s property, and on the other, to lie and deceive, and thus to fail in a double duty.
3. Duties relating to the families of others.—We have seen above what are the duties of man in his family; there remains to be said a few words touching the duties towards the families of others. One may fail in these duties either by violating the conjugal bond, which is adultery; or by carrying off other people’s children, which is abduction, or by depraving them through bad advice or bad examples, which is corruption.
4. Duties relating to the honor of others.—One may fail in these duties, either by saying to a man (who does not deserve it), wounding and rude things to his face, which are insults, or in speaking ill of others; and here we distinguish two degrees: if what is said is true, it is backbiting; if what is said is false and an invention, it is slander. In general one must not too easily ascribe evil to other men; this kind of defect is what is called rash judgments.
The positive duty respecting other people’s reputation is to be just towards every one, even towards one’s enemies; to speak well of them if they deserve it, and even of those who speak ill of us. It is a duty to entertain a kindly disposition towards men in general, provided this does not go so far as to wink at wrong. In our relations with our neighbors, usage of the world has, in order to avoid quarrels and insults, introduced what is called politeness, which, for being a worldly virtue, is not the less a necessary virtue in the order of society.
5. Duties towards the liberty of others.—These are rather the duties of the State than of the individual. They consist in respecting in others the liberty of conscience, the liberty of labor, individual liberty, personal responsibility, all of which are the natural rights of man. However, private individuals may themselves also fail in this kind of duties. The violation of the liberty of conscience is called intolerance; it consists either in employing force to constrain the consciences, or in imputing bad morals or bad motives to those who do not think as we do. The virtue opposed to intolerance is tolerance, a disposition of the soul which consists, not in approving what we think false, but in respecting in others what we wish they should respect in us, namely, conscience. One may also violate individual liberty, the liberty of labor, in keeping one’s fellow-beings in slavery; but slavery is rather a social institution than an individual act. However, there may be cases where one may seek to injure other people’s work, in restraining others by threats from work; which, for example, takes sometimes place in workmen’s strikes. There is also a certain way of domineering over the freedom of others without restraining it materially, which constitutes real tyranny; it is the dominion which a strong will exercises over a feeble will, and of which it too often is tempted to take advantage. On the contrary, it is a duty, not only to respect the liberty of others, but also to encourage it, to develop it, to enlighten it through education.
6. Duties relating to friendship.—All the preceding duties are the same towards all men. There are others which concern more particularly certain men, those, for example, to whom we are attached either by congeniality of disposition or uniformity of occupation, or a common education, etc., those, namely, whom we call friends. The duties relating to friendship are: 1, to choose well one’s friends; to choose the honest, and enlightened, in order to find in their society encouragement to right-doing. Nothing more dangerous than pleasure-friends or interested friends, united by vices and passions, instead of being united by wisdom and virtue; 2, the friends once chosen, the reciprocal duty is fidelity. They should treat each other with perfect equality and with confidence. They owe each other secrecy when they mutually entrust their dearest interests; they owe each other self-devotion when they need each other’s help. Finally, they owe to each other in a more strict and rigorous a sense, all they generally owe to other men, for the faults or crimes against humanity in general assume a still more odious character when against friends.
21. Professional duties and civic duties.—Such are the general duties of men in relation to each other, when simply viewed as men. But these duties become diversified and specialized according as we view man either in the light of the private functions he fills in society, which are his professional duties, or in the light of the particular society of which he is a member, and which is called the State or the country, and these are the civic duties. (See chapters xii. and xiii.)
22. Distinction between the duties of justice and the duties of charity.—We have said above that all the social duties could be reduced to these two maxims: “Do not do unto others what you do not wish they should do to you. Do to others as you wish to be done by.” These two maxims correspond with what is called: 1, the duties of justice; 2, the duties of charity.
The first consists in not doing wrong, or at least in repairing the wrong already done. Charity consists in doing good, or at least in giving to others what is not really their due. A celebrated writer[13] has made a very subtle and forcible distinction between these two virtues:
“The respect for the rights of others is called justice. All violation of any right whatsoever is an injustice. The greatest of injustices, since it comprises all, is slavery. Slavery is the subjugation of all the faculties of a man for the benefit of another. Moral personality should be respected in you as well as in me, and for the same reason. In regard to myself it has imposed a duty on me; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and imposes thereby, relatively to you, a new duty on me. I owe you the truth as I owe it to myself, and it is my strict duty to respect the development of your intelligence and not arrest its progress towards the truth. I must also respect your liberty; perhaps even I owe it to you more than I do to myself, for I have not always the right to prevent you from making a mistake.