“I must respect you in your affections, which are a part of yourself; and of all the affections none are more holy than those of the family. To violate the conjugal and paternal right is to violate what a person holds most sacred.
“I owe respect to your body, inasmuch as belonging to you, it is the instrument of your personality. I have neither the right to kill you nor to wound you, unless in self-defense.
“I owe respect to your property, for it is the product of your labor; I owe respect to your labor, which is your very liberty in action; and if your property comes from inheritance, I owe respect to the free will which has transmitted it to you.
“Justice, that is, the respect for the person in all that constitutes his personality, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty the only one?
“When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither put a restraint upon their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor maltreated their body, nor interfered with their family rights nor their property, can we say that we have fulfilled towards them all moral duties? A wretch is here suffering before us. Is our conscience satisfied if we can assure ourselves that we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells us that it would be well if we should give him bread, help, consolation; and yet this man in pain, who, perhaps, is going to die, has not the least right to the least part of our fortune, were this fortune ever so great; and if he were to use violence to take a farthing from us, he would commit a crime. We shall meet here a new order of duties which do not correspond to rights. Man, we have seen, may resort to force to have his rights respected, but he cannot impose on another a sacrifice, whatever that may be. Justice respects or restores: charity gives.
“One cannot say that to be charitable is not obligatory; but this obligation is by no means as precise and as inflexible as justice. Charity implies sacrifice. Now, who will furnish the rule for sacrifice, the formula for self-renunciation? For justice, the formula is clear: to respect the rights of others. But charity knows neither rule nor limits. It is above all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in its liberty.”
It follows from these considerations that justice is absolute, without restriction, without exception. Charity, whilst it is as obligatory as justice, is more independent in its applications; it chooses its place and its time, considers its objects and means. In a word, as Victor Cousin says, “its beauty is in its liberty.”
Let us not hesitate to borrow from the Apostle St. Paul his admirable exaltation of charity:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”
“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”[14]