(6) Also from occupation, that to which each individual devotes his efforts. This is either liberal or illiberal. Here belong merchants, who make their living by the exchange of goods. In this class hucksters bring up the rear. Here likewise belong all those who attend to land, plants, or domestic animals; such as countrymen, vine dressers, market gardeners, herdsmen, &c. <20>
3. Considered collectively persons constitute a society or an association when several persons are so united that both their action and their will are regarded as the action and will of a single individual, and not of several. It is understood that this takes place when individuals coming together into a society so subject their will to the will of a single individual who is the head of that society, or to the whole association, that they are willing to recognize and have regarded as their own will and action whatever the head, or the majority of the society, has decided or done in matters concerning the society.1 Hence it results that, whereas before, whatever several desired or did was regarded as the desires and actions of as many as was the number of physical persons there, now that they have been united in a society, but one will is ascribed to them, and whatever action proceeds from them as such is adjudged to be the action not of many but of one, even though a number of physical individuals have concurred in it. Hence also a society acquires its special rights and goods, which cannot at all be claimed by individuals, as such. Here must be made the further observation, that, just as individual persons remain the same, although in the passage of time the body undergoes marked changes through various additions and losses of particles, so through the particular succession of individuals a society does not change but remains the same, unless at a single time such a change befall that it utterly destroys the true character of the former body or society.2
4. We can divide societies or moral persons, furthermore, like individual persons, into public and private. The former, again, are either sacred and ecclesiastical, or political. Among sacred societies some are general, as the Catholic Church, so likewise particular churches bounded by the definite limits of regions and states, or distinguished by public formulae of confessions. Some are special, as a council, either oecumenical, national, or provincial, a diocesan synod, a consistory, the gathering of a cathedral chapter, or a presbytery.
In the same way a political society is either universal, as a state which is divided into different species, for example monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, according to whether supreme sovereignty is in the hands of an individual, or a council composed of a few citizens, or of all the citizens; or particular, as a senate, a cabinet, a tribe, &c. A scholastic society exhibits the same diversity. A society in military uniform is called an army, and its parts are the legion, the troop, the cohort, the decury, the maniple, &c. Private societies are not merely families, but also what are called guilds of merchants, and of craftsmen, and the like. It would be a long task to enumerate these one by one. Let it suffice us to have touched merely upon the most salient features. <21>
A moral thing is a thing regarded in respect of its pertinence to persons.
1. How manifold is the respect of the pertinence of actions?
2. Eminent domain, and direct ownership both ordinary and for purposes of utilization.
3. Plenary ownership, and limited.
4. What is one’s own, and what is common property.
5. The proper goods of societies.
6. Whether it be possible for a state to exclude outsiders from things of innocent utility.
7. Is the sea subject to claims of proprietorship?
8. The sea which is very close to the coasts is private property.
9. The wide spaces of ocean seem to have been regarded by the nations as derelict.
10. How navigation and commerce upon the ocean are free.
11. Possession is a complement of proprietorship.
12. The origin of ownership over things from the divine law.
13. How far the ownership of man over brute creation extends by divine law.
14. How far it extends by the law of nature.
15. Origin of proprietorship.
16. Occupation the original mode of acquisition.
17. How property has passed from the first owner to later owners.
18. How are goods to be divided among sons?
19. Lucrative modes of acquisition.
20. Burdensome modes.
21. Returns and profits of a thing are acquired for the owner.
22. Should species follow matter, or matter species?
23. False modes of acquisition.
24. Whether a fault in acquisition is eliminated through passage of time.
25. Whether it passes over to a third party.
26. How proprietorship may be lost, as also about wills.