The Doctrine of Right, Duties and Religion for the Lower Class

[p. 264]

|264| property of an individual and belongs more to his natural character, it is virtue.

§ 48

Because virtue is in part connected with natural character, it appears as a morality of a determinate kind and of greater liveliness and intensity. It is at the same time less bound up with the consciousness of duty than morality proper.

II. Family Duty

Cross-reference: § 158 ff.

§ 49

Insofar as man is cultivated, he has the possibility of acting. Insofar as he actually acts, he is necessarily in relation with other human beings. The first necessary relation into which the individual enters with others is the family relation. It indeed also has a side of right, but this is subordinate to the side of moral disposition, of love and of trust.

Explanation. The family essentially constitutes only one substance, only one person. The members of the family are not persons towards one another. They enter into such a relation only insofar as through a misfortune the moral bond has dissolved. Among the ancients the disposition of family love, and acting in its sense, was called pietas. Dutifulness has in common with piety, which is also designated by this word, that both presuppose an absolute bond, the unity existing in and for itself in a spiritual substance, a bond that is not tied by particular arbitrary will or by chance.

§ 50

This disposition consists more precisely in that each member of the family has his essence not in his own person, but that only the whole of the family constitutes its personality.

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