Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. V.: Cases in which we may judge by the Principles of the Civil Law, in limiting the Principles of the Law of Nature. - Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

Return to Title Page for Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

Search this Title:

CHAP. V.: Cases in which we may judge by the Principles of the Civil Law, in limiting the Principles of the Law of Nature. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAP. V.

Cases in which we may judge by the Principles of the Civil Law, in limiting the Principles of the Law of Nature.

AN Athenian law obliged* children to provide for their fathers, when fallen into poverty; it excepted those who were born of a courtezan, those whose chastity had been infamously prostituted by their father, and those to whom he had not given any means of gaining a livelihood.

The law considered, that, in the first case, the father being uncertain, he had rendered the natural obligation precarious; that in the second, he had sullied the life he had given, and done the greatest injury he could do to his children, in depriving them of their reputation; that in the third, he had rendered insupportable a life which had no means of subsistence. The law suspended the natural obligation of children, because the father had violated his; it looked upon the father and the son as no more than two citizens, and determined, in respect to them, only from civil and political views; ever considering, that a good republic ought to have a particular regard to manners. I am apt to think, that Solon’s law was a wise regulation in the first two cases, whether that in which nature has lest the son in ignorance with regard to his father, or that in which she even seems to ordain he should not own him; but it cannot be approved with respect to the third, where the father had only violated a civil institution.

[* ]Under pain of infamy, another under pain of imprisonment.

[]Plutarch, life of Solon.

[]Plutarch life of Solon, and Gallienus in exhort. ad art. c. 8.