tends immediately and directly to the advantage of individuals as such. In the political status matters directly concerning men’s civil society as such are handled by public authority [autoritate]. The ecclesiastical status claims as its own the service of the <16> divine, which is to be exercised especially for the welfare of society. For although ecclesiastical persons care also for the salvation of individuals, nevertheless it is for the good of society, or the commonweal, that a particular status has been assigned them.
The economic status handles, for the advantage of individuals as such, matters which have their use in communal life. The common seed-bed, as it were, of these is the scholastic status, in which minds are imbued with a liberal culture. Entering into details one meets a number of particular statuses, which any one will find easy to reduce to their proper classification.
Determinately considered, a status is either honourable or less so. The former we commonly call office; it is that status in which a person, primarily by an intellectual effort, and accompanied with a certain degree of dignity, is expected to accomplish something for another’s advantage. The latter we call service; in it a person, without an accompaniment of dignity, and primarily by a physical effort, is expected to furnish something for another’s advantage.
9. A special status, moreover, is produced either by the mere place in which a person lives, or by the condition under which he lives. For he who engages in life’s activities in his native land, or in the land where he has fixed the seat of his fortunes, enjoying full rights of that place, is called a citizen; he who enjoys partial rights, a resident; he who has established a less stable and a temporary seat of his fortunes in some place or other, is called a sojourner. He who goes about on a foreign soil, intending to remain but a short time, is called an alien, and his status alienage.
10. In general, however, one ought to be advised that sometimes because of the poverty of language, and sometimes because of the carelessness of philosophers concerning moral entities, we are frequently compelled to use one and the same word to express both the status and the attributes, as well as the quality proper to the status. And yet these are in fact distinct, and are differently conceived. Thus, for example, liberty as a status is conceived after the analogy of space; as a faculty of action it is conceived in the manner of an active quality.15 So nobility sometimes denotes a status, and sometimes the attribute of a person, because it is conceived in the manner of a passive quality.
11. But there is yet another point which must not be passed by, and this is that just as several statuses can exist concurrently in the case of a single person, so the obligations which accompany a certain status may be derived in parts from diverse principles.16 Hence it follows, that he who gathers together the obligations which flow from some one principle, disregarding all others, does by no means forthwith establish for himself a status of that same kind, to which, beside those obligations which he himself bears in mind, no other obligations can <17> or should attach themselves. Thus, he who from the Sacred Scriptures alone gathers together the separate parts of the duty of priests, does not by any means deny that these same priests are bound to perform also those duties which are required by the ecclesiastical constitutions of individual states. So we also, who are devoting ourselves here merely to those duties of man, the necessity for which can be gathered from the light of reason, do not by any manner of means insist that the status of men ever has been, or ever ought to be, such that those obligations alone belong to it.
12. Status of time is that which involves respect to the question when, or to time considered in a moral light, and it can be divided into (1) juniority and seniority. Both of these expressions are used either in respect to duration in human life, and are called age, whose grades are infancy, childhood, boyhood, youth, man’s estate, old age, and decrepitude; or in respect to duration in some adventitious status, as that of raw recruits, of veterans, of the honourably discharged at the expiration of service, &c. In the former class can be included, perhaps, even primogeniture, a status in which one has no elder brothers by the same parent.
Status of time can also be divided into (2) majority, a status in which someone is reckoned as being able to attend to his own affairs in his own way; and minority, in which one has need of a tutor or guardian. The limits of this status vary among different peoples. <18>
A moral person is a person considered under that status which he has in communal life.
1. The variety of moral persons considered separately. Public persons.
2. Private persons.
3. From the union of several persons there comes about a composite person called society.
4. Its divisions.
1. This is the most general definition of a moral person. Otherwise, primarily among the jurisconsults, a person is said to be that which possesses a civil condition [caput], that is, personal liberty; a signification by which slaves are listed under things. Now moral persons can be considered either separately or collectively. Separately considered, according to the difference of their statuses, there are public persons, those, namely, who are situated in a public status; and private persons, those, namely, who are in a private status.
Public persons are either ecclesiastical or political, and these are either principal or less principal. Among principal persons some rule the state with supreme authority, such as emperors, kings, princes, or by whatever name they are listed in whose hands is supreme sovereignty. Some exercise a part of sovereignty, by an authority delegated by majesty, and these are called by the general word magistrates. Their names are different in different states. Less principal persons are those who, without exercising authority, let out their services to princes or magistrates; among these, attendants and bailiffs occupy the lowest place, and last of all come executioners. From association with these last, although they are not branded with any legal infamy, even men who are but slightly more worthy commonly turn away; and this they do primarily because the habits of these men are very generally apt to correspond to their ministrations, which are associated with a certain degree of severity and unseemliness, or else because only mean spirits betake themselves readily to that kind of life.
In war officers of higher and lower rank correspond to magistrates. Under them are private soldiers who are also listed among public persons, because by the highest civil authority they are directly or indirectly authorized to carry arms for the state. This is understood to be the case when they take the oath of allegiance or are sent forth by the special command of their superiors to undertake the operations of warfare.
A special kind of political persons also can be constituted of those <19> whom you might call representatives. These are equipped with power [potestate] and authority [autoritate]
