Chapter VI
                          Of Paternal Power

  52. IT may perhaps be censured an impertinent criticism in a
discourse of this nature to find fault with words and names that
have obtained in the world. And yet possibly it may not be amiss to
offer new ones when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this
of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power
of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the
mother had no share in it; whereas if we consult reason or revelation,
we shall find she has an equal title, which may give one reason to ask
whether this might not be more properly called parental power? For
whatever obligation Nature and the right of generation lays on
children, it must certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent
causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of God
everywhere joins them together without distinction, when it commands
the obedience of children: "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exod.
20. 12); "Whosoever curseth his father or his mother" (Lev. 20. 9);
"Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father" (Lev. 19. 3);
"Children, obey your parents" (Eph. 6. 1), etc., is the style of the
Old and New Testament.
  53. Had but this one thing been well considered without looking
any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from
running into those gross mistakes they have made about this power of
parents, which however it might without any great harshness bear the
name of absolute dominion and regal authority, when under the title of
"paternal" power, it seemed appropriated to the father; would yet have
sounded but oddly, and in the very name shown the absurdity, if this
supposed absolute power over children had been called parental, and
thereby discovered that it belonged to the mother too. For it will but
very ill serve the turn of those men who contend so much for the
absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it,
that the mother should have any share in it. And it would have but ill
supported the monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it
appeared that that fundamental authority from whence they would derive
their government of a single person only was not placed in one, but
two persons jointly. But to let this of names pass.
  54. Though I have said above (2) "That all men by nature are equal,"
I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of "equality." Age or
virtue may give men a just precedency. Excellency of parts and merit
may place others above the common level. Birth may subject some, and
alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom
Nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due; and yet
all this consists with the equality which all men are in respect of
jurisdiction or dominion one over another, which was the equality I
there spoke of as proper to the business in hand, being that equal
right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being
subjected to the will or authority of any other man.
  55. Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of
equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of
rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into the world, and for
some time after, but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this
subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in and
supported by in the weakness of their infancy. Age and reason as
they grow up loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and
leave a man at his own free disposal.
  56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full
possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the
first instance of his being to provide for his own support and
preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of
the law of reason God had implanted in him. From him the world is
peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and
helpless, without knowledge or understanding. But to supply the
defects of this imperfect state till the improvement of growth and age
had removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by
the law of Nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and
educate the children they had begotten, not as their own
workmanship, but the workmanship of their own Maker, the Almighty,
to whom they were to be accountable for them.
  57. The law that was to govern Adam was the same that was to
govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring
having another way of entrance into the world, different from him,
by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant, and without the use
of reason, they were not presently under that law. For nobody can be
under a law that is not promulgated to him; and this law being
promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the
use of his reason cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam's
children being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason,
were not presently free. For law, in its true notion, is not so much
the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his
proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general
good of those under that law. Could they be happier without it, the
law, as a useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves
the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and
precipices. So that however it may be mistaken, the end of law is
not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For
in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is
no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint
and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and
is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man to do what he lists."
For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer
over him? But a liberty to dispose and order freely as he lists his
person, actions, possessions, and his whole property within the
allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be
subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.
  58. The power, then, that parents have over their children arises
from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their
offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind,
and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall
take its place and ease them of that trouble, is what the children
want, and the parents are bound to. For God having given man an
understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will
and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto within the
bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate
wherein he has no understanding of his own to direct his will, he is
not to have any will of his own to follow. He that understands for him
must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his
actions, but when he comes to the estate that made his father a free
man, the son is a free man too.
  59. This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or
civil. Is a man under the law of Nature? What made him free of that
law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to
his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer, an estate
wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he
might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired
that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his
guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to
have it; till then, somebody else must guide him, who is presumed to
know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such
an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free
too. Is a man under the law of England? what made him free of that
law- that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions and
possessions, according to his own will, within the permission of
that law? a capacity of knowing that law. Which is supposed, by that
law, at the age of twenty-one, and in some cases sooner. If this
made the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then, we
see the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided
by the will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him.
And if the father die and fail to substitute a deputy in this trust,
if he hath not provided a tutor to govern his son during his minority,
during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it: some
other must govern him and be a will to him till he hath attained to
a state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the
government of his will. But after that the father and son are
equally free, as much as tutor and pupil, after nonage, equally
subjects of the same law together, without any dominion left in the
father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be
only in the state and under the law of Nature, or under the positive
laws of an established government.
  60. But if through defects that may happen out of the ordinary
course of Nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason wherein
he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living
within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is
never let loose to the disposure of his own will; because he knows
no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide, but is
continued under the tuition and government of others all the time
his own understanding is incapable of that charge. And so lunatics and
idiots are never set free from the government of their parents:
"Children who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may
have, and innocents, which are excluded by a natural defect from
ever having." Thirdly: "Madmen, which, for the present, cannot
possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have, for
their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over
them, to seek and procure their good for them," says Hooker (Eccl.
Pol., lib. i., s. 7). All which seems no more than that duty which God
and Nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve
their offspring till they can be able to shift for themselves, and
will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents' regal
authority.
  61. Thus we are born free as we are born rational; not that we
have actually the exercise of either: age that brings one, brings with
it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection
to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same
principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's
understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own.
The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a
child to his parents, whilst yet short of it, are so consistent and so
distinguishable that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, "by
right of fatherhood," cannot miss of it; the most obstinate cannot but
allow of it. For were their doctrine all true, were the right heir
of Adam now known, and, by that title, settled a monarch in his
throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert
Filmer talks of, if he should die as soon as his heir were born,
must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so
much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors
and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability
to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the
health of his body, and the information of his mind would require
him to be directed by the will of others and not his own; and yet will
any one think that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent
with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or sovereignty he had a right
to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his
nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better and
sooner for it. If anybody should ask me when my son is of age to be
free, I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern.
"But at what time," says the judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s.
6), "a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason
as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then
bound to guide his actions; this is a great deal more easy for sense
to discern than for any one, by skill and learning, to determine."
  62. Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is
a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till
that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other
public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.
  63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to
his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to
instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know
how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose
to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is
not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free, but to
thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as
wretched and as much beneath that of a man as theirs. This is that
which puts the authority into the parents' hands to govern the
minority of their children. God hath made it their business to
employ this care on their offspring, and hath placed in them
suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this
power, to apply it as His wisdom designed it, to the children's good
as long as they should need to be under it.
  64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due
to their offspring into an absolute, arbitrary dominion of the father,
whose power reaches no farther than by such a discipline as he finds
most effectual to give such strength and health to their bodies,
such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children
to be most useful to themselves and others, and, if it be necessary to
his condition, to make them work when they are able for their own
subsistence; but in this power the mother, too, has her share with the
father.
  65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any
peculiar right of Nature, but only as he is guardian of his
children, that when he quits his care of them he loses his power
over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to
which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as much to the
foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of another.
So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his
issue, if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath
to the name and authority of a father. And what will become of this
paternal power in that part of the world where one woman hath more
than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America where, when
the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the children
are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under her
care and provision? And if the father die whilst the children are
young, do they not naturally everywhere owe the same obedience to
their mother, during their minority, as to their father, were he
alive? And will any one say that the mother hath a legislative power
over her children that she can make standing rules which shall be of
perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns
of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their
lives, and enforce the observation of them with capital punishments?
For this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father
hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but
temporary, and reaches not their life or property. It is but a help to
the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline
necessary to their education. And though a father may dispose of his
own possessions as he pleases when his children are out of danger of
perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods
which either their own industry, or another's bounty, has made theirs,
nor to their liberty neither when they are once arrived to the
enfranchisement of the years of discretion. The father's empire then
ceases, and he can from thenceforward no more dispose of the liberty
of his son than that of any other man. And it must be far from an
absolute or perpetual jurisdiction from which a man may withdraw
himself, having licence from Divine authority to "leave father and
mother and cleave to his wife."
  66. But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from
subjection to the will and command of his father as he himself is free
from subjection to the will of anybody else, and they are both under
no other restraint but that which is common to them both, whether it
be the law of Nature or municipal law of their country, yet this
freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the
law of God and Nature, to pay his parents, God having made the parents
instruments in His great design of continuing the race of mankind
and the occasions of life to their children. As He hath laid on them
an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring, so
He has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring
their parents, which, containing in it an inward esteem and
reverence to be shown by all outward expressions, ties up the child
from anything that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger the
happiness or life of those from whom he received his, and engages
him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance, and comfort of
those by whose means he entered into being and has been made capable
of any enjoyments of life. From this obligation no state, no
freedom, can absolve children. But this is very far from giving
parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to
make laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties. It
is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude, and assistance;
another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour
due to parents a monarch on his throne owes his mother, and yet this
lessens not his authority nor subjects him to her government.
  67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary
government which terminates with the minority of the child; and the
honour due from a child places in the parents a perpetual right to
respect, reverence, support, and compliance, to more or less, as the
father's care, cost, and kindness in his education has been more or
less, and this ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and
conditions of a man's life. The want of distinguishing these two
powers which the father hath, in the right of tuition, during
minority, and the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have
caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter. For, to speak
properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of
children and duty of parents than any prerogative of paternal power.
The nourishment and education of their children is a charge so
incumbent on parents for their children's good, that nothing can
absolve them from taking care of it. And though the power of
commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath woven
into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their
offspring, that there is little fear that parents should use their
power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side,
the strong bias of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God
Almighty, when He would express His gentle dealing with the
Israelites, He tells them that though He chastened them, "He chastened
them as a man chastens his son" (Deut. 8. 5)- i.e., with tenderness
and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was
absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness, to have
slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded
obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be
increased or ill-rewarded.
  68. On the other side, honour and support all that which gratitude
requires to return; for the benefits received by and from them is
the indispensable duty of the child and the proper privilege of the
parents. This is intended for the parents' advantage, as the other
is for the child's; though education, the parents' duty, seems to have
most power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand
in need of restraint and correction, which is a visible exercise of
rule and a kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in
the word "honour" requires less obedience, though the obligation be
stronger on grown than younger children. For who can think the
command, "Children, obey your parents," requires in a man that has
children of his own the same submission to his father as it does in
his yet young children to him, and that by this precept he were
bound to obey all his father's commands, if, out of a conceit of
authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a
boy?
  69. The first part, then, of paternal power, or rather duty, which
is education, belongs so to the father that it terminates at a certain
season. When the business of education is over it ceases of itself,
and is also alienable before. For a man may put the tuition of his son
in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to
another has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his
obedience, both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of
honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire to them; nothing
can cancel that. It is so inseparable from them both, that the
father's authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can
any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both
these are very far from a power to make laws, and enforcing them
with penalties that may reach estate, liberty, limbs, and life. The
power of commanding ends with nonage, and though after that honour and
respect, support and defence, and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a
man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of be
always due from a son to his parents, yet all this puts no sceptre
into the father's hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no
dominion over his son's property or actions, nor any right that his
will should prescribe to his son's in all things; however, it may
become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his
family, to pay a deference to it.
  70. A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient or wise man,
defence to his child or friend, relief and support to the
distressed, and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree that all
he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it. But all these
give no authority, no right of making laws to any one over him from
whom they are owing. And it is plain all this is due, not to the
bare title of father, not only because as has been said, it is owing
to the mother too, but because these obligations to parents, and the
degrees of what is required of children, may be varied by the
different care and kindness trouble and expense, is often employed
upon one child more than another.
  71. This shows the reason how it comes to pass that parents in
societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over
their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who
are in the state of Nature, which could not possibly be if all
political power were only paternal, and that, in truth, they were
one and the same thing; for then, all paternal power being in the
prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two
powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and
separate, and built upon so different foundations, and given to so
different ends, that every subject that is a father has as much a
paternal power over his children as the prince has over his. And every
prince that has parents owes them as much filial duty and obedience as
the meanest of his subjects do to theirs, and can therefore contain
not any part or degree of that kind of dominion which a prince or
magistrate has over his subject.
  72. Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children,
and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all
the power, on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are
proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in
the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children,
which, though it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of
showing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private
families and in instances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken
notice of, it passes in the world for a part of "paternal
jurisdiction." And this is the power men generally have to bestow
their estates on those who please them best. The possession of the
father being the expectation and inheritance of the children
ordinarily, in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of
each country, yet it is commonly in the father's power to bestow it
with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of
this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.
  73. This is no small tie to the obedience of children; and there
being always annexed to the enjoyment of land a submission to the
government of the country of which that land is a part, it has been
commonly supposed that a father could oblige his posterity to that
government of which he himself was a subject, that his compact held
them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land
which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on
that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a
voluntary submission; for every man's children being, by Nature, as
free as himself or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they
are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to,
what commonwealth they will put themselves under. But if they will
enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the
same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions
annexed to such a possession. By this power, indeed, fathers oblige
their children to obedience to themselves even when they are past
minority, and most commonly, too, subject them to this or that
political power. But neither of these by any peculiar right of
fatherhood, but by the reward they have in their hands to enforce
and recompense such a compliance, and is no more power than what a
Frenchman has over an Englishman, who, by the hopes of an estate he
will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience; and
if when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it
upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that
country where it lies, whether it be France or England.
  74. To conclude, then, though the father's power of commanding
extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a
degree only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and
though that honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called
piety, which they indispensably owe to their parents all their
lifetime, and in all estates, with all that support and defence, is
due to them, gives the father no power of governing- i.e., making laws
and exacting penalties on his children; though by this he has no
dominion over the property or actions of his son, yet it is obvious to
conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in
places still where the thinness of people gives families leave to
separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove and
plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the
family to become the prince of it;* he had been a ruler from the
beginning of the infancy of his children; and when they were grown up,
since without some government it would be hard for them to live
together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit
consent of the children, be in the father, where it seemed, without
any change, barely to continue. And when, indeed, nothing more was
required to it than the permitting the father to exercise alone in his
family that executive power of the law of Nature which every free
man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a
monarchical power whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by
any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is
evident from hence, that nobody doubts but if a stranger, whom
chance or business had brought to his family, had there killed any
of his children, or committed any other act, he might condemn and
put him to death, or otherwise have punished him as well as any of his
children. which was impossible he should do by virtue of any
paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of
that executive power of the law of Nature which, as a man, he had a
right to; and he alone could punish him in his family where the
respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to
give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should
remain in him above the rest of his family.

  * "It is no improbable opinion, therefore, which the
arch-philosopher was of, That the chief person in every household
was always, as it were, a king; so when numbers of households joined
themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of
governors among them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the
name of fathers continued still in them, who of fathers were made
rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as
Melchizedec; and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which
fathers did, at the first, grew, perhaps, by the same occasion.
Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regimen that has been received
in the world. The inconveniencies of one kind have caused sundry
others to be devised, so that, in a word, all public regimen, of
what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the
deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging
it convenient and behoveful, there being no impossibility in Nature,
considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public
regimen." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 10.

  75. Thus it was easy and almost natural for children, by a tacit and
almost natural consent, to make way for the father's authority and
government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow
his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and
when they were men, who was fitter to rule them? Their little
properties and less covetousness seldom afforded greater
controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a
fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained
and brought up. and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder
that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age, nor
looked after one-and-twenty, or any other age, that might make them
the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they could have no
desire to be out of their pupilage. The government they had been under
during it continued still to be more their protection than
restraint; and they could nowhere find a greater security to their
peace, liberties, and fortunes than in the rule of a father.
  76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change,
became the politic monarchs of them too; and as they chanced to live
long, and leave able and worthy heirs for several successions or
otherwise, so they laid the foundations of hereditary or elective
kingdoms under several constitutions and manors, according as
chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if
princes have their titles in the father's right, and it be a
sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political
authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de
facto, the exercise of government, I say, if this argument be good, it
will as strongly prove that all princes, nay, princes only, ought to
be priests, since it is as certain that in the beginning "the father
of the family was priest, as that he was ruler in his own household."