Promises and contracts.—Differences between these two facts.—Strict obligation to keep one’s promises: rare exceptions (practical impossibility, illicit promises, etc.)—Different kinds of contracts.—Conditions of the contract: consent, capacity of contracting parties, a real object, a licit cause.—Rules for the formation of contracts.—Rules for the interpretation of contracts.
The immediate consequence of the right of self-preservation which each has, etc., implies the right of property.
31. Property.—What is property? What is its origin and principle? What objections has it raised? What moral and social reasons justify it, rendering its maintenance both sacred and necessary?
“Property,” says the civil code, “is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided no use is made of them prohibited by the laws or the rules.” (Art. 544.)
“The right of property,” says the Constitution of ’93, “is that which belongs to every citizen: to enjoy, and dispose at will of his property, his income, of the fruit of his labor and industry.” (Art. 8.)
These are the judicial and political definitions of property. Philosophically, it may be said, that it is the right each man has to make something his own, that is to say, to attribute to himself the exclusive right to enjoy something outside of himself.
We must distinguish between possession and property. Possession is nothing else than actual custody: I may have in my hands an object that is not mine, which has either been loaned to me, or which I may have found; this does not make me its proprietor. Property is the right I have to exclude all others from the use of a thing, even if I should not be in actual possession of it.
32. Origin and fundamental principle of property.—The first property is that of my own body, but thus far it is nothing else than what may be called corporeal liberty. How do we go beyond that? How do we extend this primitive right over things which are outside of ourselves?
Let us first remark that this right of appropriating external things rests on necessity and on the laws of organized beings. It is evident, in fact, that life cannot be preserved otherwise than by a perpetual exchange between the parts of the living body and the particles of the surrounding bodies. Nutrition is assimilation, and, consequently, appropriation. It is, then, necessary that certain things of the external world should become mine, otherwise life is impossible.
Property is then necessary; let us now see by what means it becomes legitimate.