incompatible. Similarly, according to the most zealous defenders of absolute monarchy, the subjection of a prince during his minority to the queen regent, his wet nurse, his tutors, or his governors is not incompatible with the right to the crown he inherited from his father, or the sovereign authority which will one day be vested in him when age will have made him capable of ruling himself and others.
Although children, once they find themselves at an age to know what nature’s laws or civil society ask of them, are not obliged to violate these laws to satisfy their parents, a child is always obliged to honor his father and mother in recognition of the care they took of him, and nothing will exempt him from this. I say that he is forever obliged to honor his father and his mother, because the mother has as much right as the father, and should the father ever order the contrary, the child should not obey him.
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At the same time, I add, and most expressly, that the duties of honor, respect, attachment, and gratitude due the father and the mother may be more or less extensive on the part of children and may be proportional to the care parents invested in educating them, and to parental sacrifices. Otherwise, a child does not have much obligation to parents, who, after having brought him into the world, neglected to provide for him according to their situation, to furnish him the means to one day live happily or usefully, while they gave themselves up to their pleasures, tastes, passions, and the dissipation of their fortune, those vain and superfluous expenditures of which we see so many examples in the lands of luxury. “You deserve nothing from our country for having given it a citizen,” rightly states a Roman poet, “if as a result of your care he is not useful to the republic in times of war and peace and if he is not capable of making the most of our lands.”
Gratum est, quod patriae civem, populoque dedisti;
Si facis ut patriae sit idoneus, utilis agris
Utilis & bellorum, & pacis rebus agendis.
Juvenal, Sat., xiv. 70 & seqq.2
It is therefore easy to decide the long-debated question as to whether the perpetual obligation of children toward their father and mother is principally founded on birth or on the benefits of education. In effect, in order to reasonably claim that someone is greatly accountable to us for a good received, we have to have known to whom we were giving, at what cost, and if it had been our intent to render service to the beneficiary rather than to procure something useful or pleasurable for ourselves. We must know if we were compelled to act by reason, by our senses, or to satisfy some desire, and finally, if what we give can be useful to the recipient without our doing him other favors.
Many important questions related to this subject are still bandied about, though the majority can be resolved according to the principles we have established. Nevertheless, here are the main ones:
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(1) It may be asked whether or not the promises and engagements of a child are valid. I answer that the promises and engagements of a child who finds himself in the first category of childhood we defined are null and void, since all consent supposes (a) the physical power to consent; (b) the moral power to consent, that is, the use of reason; (c) a serious and free use of these two sorts of power. Now children, who cannot reason, fulfill neither of these conditions. But when the faculty of judgment is perfectly formed, it is likely that according to natural law, the child who freely committed himself to something, say, a loan, without having been surprised or deceived, must pay back this loan without having recourse to the benefits of civil law.
(2) It may be asked if a child, having grown up, may not leave his family without his mother and father’s acquiescence. I answer that in the independent state of nature, the heads of families cannot retain a child against his will when he gives good reasons for wanting to separate from his parents and to live free.
It follows that children, once they are mature, can marry without the consent of their father and mother, because the obligation to listen to and to respect the advice of one’s superiors does not detract from the right to dispose of one’s property and oneself. I know that the right of fathers and mothers is legitimately founded on their power, their love, and their reason. All this is true insofar as the child is in a state of ignorance and drunk with passion, but when children have attained the age of their reason’s maturity, they can dispose of themselves when taking a step where liberty is absolutely essential—that is to say, marriage. One cannot love through the heart of another. In a word, paternal power consists of raising and governing one’s children for as long as they are not in a state to govern themselves, but, according to natural right, it does not extend any further. See FATHER, MOTHER, PATERNAL POWER.
(3) It is asked if children, even those who are still in their mother’s belly, can acquire and maintain a right of property for goods transferred to them. Civilized nations have established that this be the case. Moreover, reason and natural equity authorize such a practice.
(4) Finally, it may be asked if children may be punished for a crime committed by their father or their mother. But that is a shameful question.
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Nobody can be reasonably punished for a crime committed by another when he himself is innocent. All merits and demerits are personal and depend on the individual’s will, which is the most personal and inalienable of life’s possessions. Human laws that condemn children for the crimes of their fathers are therefore as unjust as they are barbarous. “It is despotic furor,” aptly says the author of The Spirit of the Laws, “that demands that the disgrace of the father lead to that of the children and women: they are unfortunate enough without being criminals. Moreover, it is necessary that the prince allow supplicants to mediate between the accused and himself so that they may move him to clemency or enlighten his justice.”3 Article by Chevalier DE JAUCOURT
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Savings †
SAVINGS (Morality), signifies sometimes the treasury of the prince, savings treasurer, savings revenue.
Savings in this sense is hardly in use any more; today, one instead says royal treasury.
Savings, the law of savings, expression used by some modern scientists to express the decree by which God regulates, in the simplest and most constant manner, all the movements, all the alterations, and the other natural changes. See ACTION, COSMOLOGY, &c.
Savings, in the most common sense, is a function of economy; properly speaking, it is the care and skill necessary to avoid superfluous expenses, and to incur those expenses that are indispensable at little cost. The observations one is going to read here could have gone with the word ECONOMY, which has a broader sense, and which embraces all legitimate means, all the efforts necessary to preserve and increase any possession, and especially to dispense it appropriately. It is in this sense that one says family economy, bees’ economy, national economy. Notwithstanding, the terms savings and economy express virtually the same idea, and they will be employed indiscriminately in this essay, according as how they appear more convenient for exactness of expression.
Economic savings have always been regarded as a virtue, both under paganism and by Christians; there have even been heroes who have practiced it with perseverance. Nonetheless, we must admit that this virtue is too modest, or if you will, too obscure to be essential to heroism; few heroes
