Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence. Samuel Pufendorf

Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence - Samuel Pufendorf


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they will quickly return to their free state, and some will turn upon man himself. And this too seems not to be without bearing on the case, the circumstance, namely, that since otherwise those harmless beasts are exposed to the prey and the butchery of other beasts which are rapacious, their condition is rendered better, rather <34> than worse, by the fact that men have asserted so much power [potestatis] over them; for men both provide for their food as a kind of compensation, and protect them against the attacks of wild beasts.

      This, therefore, is what nature has been urging upon us, namely, that in order to preserve peace about those things from whose promiscuous utilization strife was very likely to arise, each man should have some definite portion assigned him, to which no other could assert any just claim. As for the rest of things, the utilization of which is limitless, nature left it to the mere free will of man as to what disposition he might see fit to make of them. And, in truth, no such state of affairs has ever existed, at least after men divided into several families, as one in which all persons had all things in common. For the fables which the poets tell us of the golden age,21 have either been distorted from the state of man in Paradise, or else hint at the liberality and humanity with which primitive men gave freely to any one who needed it the use of their own possessions. In this way, even to-day, we say that friends have all things in common.22 And again it was not necessary to mark so carefully the boundary of the field when the broad expanse <35> of the same abundantly sufficed the scanty number of men. In short, the sum of all that has been said comes to this, namely, that the first man, with the consent of God, and without the resistance of any obstacle in their nature, and furthermore under the pressure of necessity, took to himself things when they offered themselves, as it were, to him; that, after mankind multiplied, nature urged individuals to possess separately portions of the same, to the exclusion of other men, and this she has done in order to avoid the inconveniences which would arise from common ownership; that the actual division among individuals, which division confers ownership to a definite portion of these things, has been fortified by the tacit or expressed pacts of men; and that therefore proprietorship, in so far as it introduces the division of things among several owners exclusive of others, is due to the suasion of nature, but that actually it has been established by the pacts of men.


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