A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its intelligence and freedom.
A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.
A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use that the person using it derives from it.[227]
Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and with duty right is wanting also.
It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on me a right.
I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it be degraded by you.
The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.
It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using them.
Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first property is the person. All other properties are derived from that. Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own character, its right and its title.
The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading itself,—it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty, which are its constituent elements.