at pp. 24–25 and in other passages where we speak of obedience to law and actions truly good. [I.2.12.ii]
Justice, in the broad sense here explained, as it is nothing other than goodness in relation to the person in whom the action terminates, can have regard to the agent himself as well as to any other man. [I.2.13.i]
The justice which is here analyzed as above is justice toward other men. Universal justice, however unsuitable that name may be, should be confined to duties which another person could not require in his own right. Otherwise one member of the division would exhaust the whole which was being divided.
But to penetrate this distinction more deeply, notice that justice toward other men, i.e., the habitual will to perform the duties which are due to them and to abstain from the contrary actions, assumes in the person for whom justice is to be done, some right or facility afforded by law, of doing, having, or obtaining something from someone else, and in the party which is doing justice, it assumes the corresponding obligation of permitting him so to do or to have, or of providing that which the other has the right of obtaining from him. Furthermore, just as right on the one hand and obligation on the other are founded (as will be said below)7 in the importance of the duty in question to the preservation and advancement of social life among men, so both the right and the corresponding obligation vary according to the varying degrees of importance. There are some duties which are so absolutely necessary to social life that human society itself would be unsociable in their absence, and therefore they are rightly enforced even on those who do not want to do them. But there are other duties, which pertain to the comfort or ornament of social life more than to its essence, and are therefore left to the discretion and honor of each individual. One is said to have a perfect right to the former, a right which is often distinguished by the term suo jure. To the latter one has only an imperfect right. Likewise, the obligation of performing the former is called perfect, of the latter, imperfect. Finally, the justice which disposes one to the performance of perfect duties is called particular justice; Grotius calls it expletive (expletrix); it is what we have called justice in the strictest sense, which is defined by the jurists as the constant and perpetual will to give each man his due.8 The justice which inclines men to imperfect duties is called universal; Grotius calls it attributive (attributrix); it embraces all the other virtues which pertain to other men.9
Note in passing that in civil society the distinction between perfect and imperfect right, and so between expletive and attributive justice, is normally to be found in the civil laws, which grant or deny an action in the courts. [I.2.14.i]
A wrong (injuria) is a violation of another’s perfect right, whether it comes about by unjust action or by omission of a due action, whether by deliberate intention or by culpable negligence or recklessness. Hence Justinian teaches that the lex Aquilia, which was directed against those who wrongfully inflict loss, applies to those who harm others not only by fraud but also by fault (Institutes, IV.3.3). [I.2.15.i]
A right may relate simply to doing or to having something; corresponding to this right is an indefinite obligation on others to permit one so to do or to have. Or a right may relate to requiring something from another person; to this corresponds a more specific obligation upon the other to do that particular thing. A wrong is committed by the violation of either of these rights. The author seems to imply this distinction in the immediately preceding words. Two of the three precepts of law given at Institutes, I.1.3, seem to make the same point: namely, the two which relate to others, not to harm another and to give each man his due. Further, the former right is violated by harming, without just cause, either the man himself or his possessions, or by taking them away without such a cause. The latter right is violated by refusing either a thing or a service which is due by perfect obligation. [I.2.15.ii]
Among these many philosophical comments, may I also be permitted here to suggest one philological observation, with due deference to others’ judgment. This is that a law is not properly spoken of as introduced (latam) by the person who commands (iubet) a law, and in whose command the force of the law lies. For the introduction of a law or legislation (legislatio), so far as I have had occasion to observe, was not, among the Romans, attributed either to the free People or in later times to the Emperors, but only to the magistrate who was the author of the law which was to be commanded by the people.10 And this is the only sense in which the Legislators of the Greek states, Solon, Lycurgus, Zaleucus, etc., are so called by Roman writers.11 [I.2.16.i]
The basic precepts of natural law2
Pufendorf’s doctrine of the fundamental precept of natural law, which he lays out in chapter 3 [Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, I.3], has long been criticized by many grave and learned men as unsatisfactory and inadequate to the end it seeks to achieve. So instead of making individual notes on this chapter we will attempt to give some idea, in the most summary form possible, of a doctrine of the precepts of Natural Law which may be seen to be less open to those criticisms.
1. In the first place, we must keep before our eyes the notion of the Divine Law and of the duty it prescribes which we established at pp. 24–25. That notion is that when God prescribes something to us, He is simply signifying that he requires us to do such and such an action, and regards it, when offered with that intention, as a sign of love and veneration toward him, while failure to perform such actions, and, still worse, commission of the contrary acts, he interprets as an indication of contempt or hatred. Since a man can give evidence in his actions of both of these sentiments toward God, either immediately and directly or mediately and indirectly, the duties prescribed to us by law are either immediate or mediate.
2. The immediate duties directly express the sentiment due to God, and insofar as they are prescribed by natural law, they are recognized as tending to signify that sentiment directly, or in their very notion. Such are the duties surveyed by our author in chapter 4 [Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, I.4], and all of them may be summed up in this one precept, which we lay down as the first precept, that God is to be worshipped.
3. In the mediate duties, i.e., those which are directed not immediately toward God but toward created things, the same sentiment is declared to be due to God. The sum of these duties consists in this, that each man should treat the universal system of rational creatures with benevolence subordinated to love and reverence for God; and therefore each man should attempt to promote the common good of these creatures so far as his strength permits, and so long as he has no knowledge that it may interfere with the illustration of the divine glory. When we speak of rational creatures we mean creatures which are endowed not only with some capacity to reason, but with that kind of reason whose right use enables them to rise to knowledge of the great and good God and of their obligation to him. For rational creatures bear the image of their Creator in a special way. And in the divine dispensation toward them, there shine out those perfections of God, whose illustration is the aim of all divine works. Toward rational creatures God has dispensed the effects of his goodness with so generous a hand that, after the illustration of his own glories, he seems particularly to have intended their happiness, so far as they bear themselves with due subordination to him. Therefore, just as love toward the head of a household is shown through effective benevolence
