Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence. Samuel Pufendorf
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] to act by some one in whose place they transact affairs with another to the same effect as though they had been handled by the same person himself. Such are ambassadors, vicegerents, plenipotentiaries, and likewise syndics. Among private persons trustees and guardians occupy an equivalent position.
As for the ecclesiastical persons, to the extent to which any one has been brought up in some religion, it will be easy for him to take cognizance of their variety; nor can scholastic persons fail to be recognized by the learned.
2. Among private persons distinctions are drawn from (1) sex, whence are male, female, and hermaphrodite. Although these distinctions are properly physical, they nevertheless belong here because of a certain moral respect, in so far as the sexes are differently treated in civil life. For we both regard most women as beneath the dignity of a man’s wrath, and we treat their insults as of less account than those of men, nor do we set so high a value upon their judgement and testimony, and, as a general thing, we do not admit them to public office, however capable otherwise they may be. And as for the hermaphrodite we turn away from one as from a monstrosity of nature.
(2) Distinctions are drawn also from moral status in time, whence it comes that the treatment of a young man is different from that of an old man, and an old man may do what does not become a young man, and vice versa. So also the authority [autoritas] of an old man is different from that of a young man.
(3) They are drawn also from the moral position in the state. Hence one man is a citizen, another a sojourner, another a resident, another an alien. As these men are bound in different ways to the state, so also they are not rated in the same way in regard to the distribution of advantages and the imposition of burdens.
(4) Distinctions are drawn also from the moral position in the family, whence we have husband, wife, father, children, master, slave, who are as it were ordinary members; to their number the guest is sometimes added, outside the regular order.
(5) Also from lineage, whence we have the nobleman who may be descended from an illustrious or a less illustrious family, or the plebeian. These are differently distinguished in