The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

the little one to the little. He was not τοῦ ἁρμόττοντος κριτὴς: “a judge of the fitness,” but of the property (Xenophon, Cyropaedia). Omnium, quæ in hominum doctorum disputatione versantur, nihil est profecto præstabilius, quàm planè intelligi nos ad justitiam esse natos, neque opinione, sed naturâ constitutum esse just: “Of all the things that learned men dispute about, there is none better than this: that we should be thoroughly convinced that we were born to do what is right, and that right is not made by opinion but by nature.” (Cicero, De Legibus.) ↩

There is another way of acquiring a title mentioned: which is, by the right of war, as it is called. Sunt privata nulla naturâ: sed aut veteri occupatione, ut qui quondam in vacua venerunt; aut victoriâ, ut qui bello potiti sunt, etc.: “Nothing belongs to particular persons by nature: but either by long possession, as when men, a long while since, came into lands which had no owners; or else by victory, as they who enjoy them from war, etc.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) And so, in Xenophon, it is said to be an eternal law among men that if a city be taken in war, the bodies and goods of the people in it are the conqueror’s; and they may possess them as their own, not ἀλλότρια: “as belonging to others.” But sure this wants limitations. ↩

Allodium, “Freehold.” ↩

Πολλάκις ἐγέλασα διαθήκας ἀναγινώσκων λεγούσας ὁ δεῖνα μὲν ἐχέτω τὴν δεσποτείαν τῶν ἀγρῶν, ἢ τῆς οἰκίας, τὴν δὲ χρῆσιν ἄλλος· Πάντες γὰρ τὴν χρῆσιν ἔχομεν, τὴν δεσποτείαν δὲ οὐδείς⁠ ⁠… καὶ ἑκόντες, καὶ ἄκοντες ἐν τῇ τελευτῇ παραχωρήσομεν ἑτέροις, τὴν χρῆσιν καρπωσάμενοι μόνον: “I have oftentimes laughed when I read any of those wills in which it is said, ‘let such or such a one be the real owner of the lands or houses, and let another person have the use of them,’ for the use is all that belongs to any of us; we are not the real owners.⁠ ⁠… After death they go to others, whether we will or no, when we have enjoyed the use only.” (St. Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty.) Τούτων μὲν φύσει οὐδενός έσμεν κύριοι, νόμῳ δὲ καὶ διαδοχῇ τὴν χρῆσιν αὐτῶν εἰς ἀόριστον παραλαμβάνοντες, ὀλιγοχρόνιοι δεσπόται νομιζόμεθα κἀπειδὰν ἡ προθεσμία παρέλθῃ τηνικαῦτα παραλαβὼν ἄλλος ἀπολαύει τοῦ ὀνόματος: “We are not by nature the real owners of any of these things, but are invested by law or by succession with the use of them for an uncertain time, and are therefore called temporary tenants; and when the time prescribed is past, then they go to another, and he enjoys the same title.” (Lucian, Letter to Nigrinus.) ↩

Qui te pascit ager, tuus est: “The field that maintains you is your field, etc.” (Horace, alluding to this truth, Epistles.) Περί παντὸς: “As to the matter of injuries,” says Plato, ἓν εἰρήσθω τοιόνδε δέ τι νόμιμον βιαίων πέρι· τῶν ἀλλοτρίων μηδένα μηδὲν φέρειν μηδὲ ἄγειν·: “there is only some such general law as this for every man, viz.: that no man should plunder, or by violence take anything that belongs to another,” and then proceeds, μηδ᾽ αὖ χρῆσθαι μηδενὶ τῶν τοῦ πέλας, ἐὰν μὴ πείσῃ τὸν κεκτημένον, κ.τ.λ.: “nor make any use of anything that comes in their way, without the leave of the owner.” (Laws.) In Plutarch the thing is carried farther, where it is said that a man passing by another man’s door μὴ βλέπειν ἔισω, κ.τ.λ.: “ought not to look in” (De Curiositate.); according to a saying of Xenocrates, μηδὲν διαφέρειν ἢ τοὺς πόδας ἢ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς εἰς ἀλλοτρίαν οἰκίαν τιθέναι: “there is no difference between looking in and going into another man’s house.” (quoted in De Curiositate.) ↩

Furtum fit,⁠ ⁠… cum quis alienam rem invito domino contrectat: “It is real theft⁠ ⁠… to meddle with anything that belongs to another against his will.” (Justinian, Institutes.) ↩

On the contrary נעשה דין⁠—נעשה אמת: “We shall make justice, we shall make truth.” A saying of ריב״ל, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. And Cicero more than once uses the word verum, “true” for justum, “just,” and veritas, “truth” for bonitas, “goodness” or probitas, “probity.” ↩

Account τὸ σὸν μόνον σὸν εἶναι, τὸ δὲ ἀλλότριον, ὥσπερ ἐστίν, ἀλλότριον: “that only your own which really is so, and look upon that as another’s which really is so.” (Epictetus’s words, Enchiridion.) Justitiæ primum munus est, ut ne cui quis noceat, nisi lacessitus injuria; deinde, ut communibus pro communibus utatur, privatis ut suis: “The first property of justice is that no man should do any hurt to another, unless provoked by some injury; after this, he is to make use of those things that are common, in common with others, and use the things that belong to himself as his own.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) This is to use things as being what they are. ↩

Blepsias ὁ δανειστὴς, “the usurer,” in Lucian, dies of hunger (λιμῷ ἄθλιος ἐλέγετο ἀπεσκληκέναι: “the miserable wretch is reported to have pined away till he died.” —⁠Dialogues of the Dead). Ridiculous enough. ↩

Or only πρὸς τὸ ἀριθμεῖν: “to be perpetually telling it over,” as Anacharsis said of some Greeks. (Athenæus, Deipnosophistae.) ↩

As that man, in Athenæus’s Deipnosophistae, endeavored literally to do; of whom it is reported, that, being much in love with his money, before he died he swallowed as much