I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify them.
I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself; and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves, yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some souls by a regular and consecrated affection,—to this need the family responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,—it only requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all ties—father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of its parents—to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is perhaps its most sacred possession.
I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and even constraint.
I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise; and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the free will that has transmitted them to you.[235]
Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a right is an injustice.
Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,—to retrench the least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.
The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little only in the interest of another,—it is not for the purpose of enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no wife, no children,—he has a female and little ones. His activity does not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that nothing may be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,—in the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists, slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the abuse of force.[236]
Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes the person, 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 restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.
There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries out against you; and yet this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity gives, and gives freely.