Question Four: On the Subject of Right and Dominion

171. God alone has universal, absolute, independent, and principal dominion over all created things, insofar as He is their first principle of creation and conservation (Ps. XXIII, 1; Wis. XII, 16).

He cannot abdicate this dominion, nor communicate it to any creature, nor exempt any creature from it, because He cannot communicate its title, nor can anyone be exempted from Him. But to the intellectual creature, created to His image, He communicates a particular and relative dominion, subordinated to His universal dominion, just as also He communicates the power of acting under the supreme cause. Hence the dominion which belongs to man has been conferred on him in order to other men; but not in order to God Himself, who alone is always and remains the essential and absolute lord of all things, to whom all will render an account of their dominion.

On earth every man and only man is of himself capable of dominion.

172. Only a being of intellectual nature is capable of right and dominion. - And thus not only the individual is understood, but also a collection of men, which makes a moral person. - It is proved:

He alone is capable of dominion who can morally dispose of some thing as his own, and suffer injustice. But:

1. intellectual nature alone can morally dispose of some thing as its own, because to every intellectual nature and to it alone there belongs the foundation of dominion, namely, intellect and will, through which it has the power of disposing at will of its own acts, and consequently of external things;

2. likewise it alone can suffer injustice: for no one suffers injury unless he is reasonably unwilling; but he who lacks intellect and will cannot be unwilling in this way: for he is unwilling who by will wishes to retain his right concerning the thing, or to obligate others not to take it away.

Therefore intellectual nature alone is capable of dominion.

Brute animals are incapable of this will, as also of the use of dominion, for which it is required to refer one thing to another, which belongs to reason; and therefore properly they do not have rights. Moreover, they are subjected to rational beings as to their end, and consequently as to all things which serve them as means to this end. Whence they can be injured or killed without injury properly so called. Yet man owes it to himself and to the natural order not to injure or destroy animals without a reasonable cause or sufficient reason.

173. For radical dominion and strict right the use of reason is not required, but rational nature suffices. - For although for the actual use or formal exercise of right and dominion the use of reason is required, nevertheless it is not required for habitual dominion, which is immediately founded not in act, but in rational powers ordered to act.

Hence children and the insane possess internal goods; moreover, the common good demands that external goods at once be bound to them (for example, on account of their necessities), so that they may remain proper to them; - on the contrary, a right for which the use of reason is necessarily required cannot belong to them, for example, the right of contracting. And therefore civil law acknowledges their right, but establishes that the administration of goods is to be exercised by curators or tutors.

174. Matter To Be Treated. - The right of dominion is circumscribed by positive law, and therefore it can happen that someone becomes incapable of right in several matters, or that power in him is restricted. Hence we shall speak of those who are not fully capable of dominion, namely: 1. of children under paternal power; 2. of wives; 3. of authors and inventors; 4. of secular clerics; 5. of religious; 6. of moral persons.