Morals of the Church
Library › Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology › Volume I › Book II. On the Exercise of the Christian Life, or on the Cultivation of the Virtues › Treatise II. On the Cultivation of the Moral Virtues › Dissertation I. On the Precepts of the Decalogue › Part VII. On the Seventh and Tenth Precepts of the Decalogue › Section I. On Commutative Justice Itself › Chapter I. On Commutative Justice Generally › Article II. On the Objects of Commutative Justice, or on Strict Rights › § III. On the Modes of Acquiring Strict Rights

point — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Point II. On Production and Specification

799.

I. Notion of production. Production is the production of fruits, and concerns both fruits of ingenuity and other fruits which some thing produces either by its own nature, or by man's labor and industry. Production, insofar as it includes fruits of ingenuity, was discussed in n. 766. It remains that we speak of it insofar as it concerns other fruits of things.

Production and Specification

800.

II. Distinction of fruits. Fruits are distinguished:

  1. By theologians into: 1° natural fruits, which proceed from the thing itself without notable human labor, such as the offspring of animals and the fruits of trees; 2° industrial fruits, which are properly produced by the labor of man, although using the thing as a means, such as works of art, profit from commerce and trade; 3° mixed fruits, which proceed from the thing itself through notable human labor as a means, such as crops, wine, cheese; 4° civil fruits, which come to someone on the occasion of a thing through a contract, such as rental payments, rents, and the increase of money given as a loan.

  2. By jurists, fruits are distinguished conformably to the respective civil Code; consult it.

Production and Specification

801.

III. To whom do fruits belong? 1. Natural fruits, likewise mixed fruits taken in the sense of theologians, per se belong to the owner of the fruitful thing, with expenses made by another for producing the fruits nevertheless being compensated. I said per se, on account of the things to be said concerning the possessor in good faith who is not the owner of the thing.

  1. Industrial fruits, taken in the sense of theologians, belong to him who produced them, even if in producing them he used another's thing, yet under the burden of compensating the damages which he voluntarily caused by using another's thing.

  2. Civil fruits - just like natural fruits - belong to the owner of the thing through which they were obtained, if the use of the thing is of itself apt for producing fruits, such as rental payments; they belong - just like industrial fruits - to him who produced them, if it is a question of interest on money.

Production and Specification

802.

IV. To production can be reduced specification, which is had when someone fashions a new object from another's matter, for example a statue from a stone. Therefore specification is a mode of acquiring ownership,1 because neither the active power from which the new species principally proceeds, nor the new species itself, was possessed by the possessor of the thing not yet changed; nevertheless the possessor of this thing should be, or be made, unharmed.

Insofar as the aforesaid things are modified by civil law, see the law of one's country.

1 Encyclical Quadragesimo anno (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1931, p. 194).

Production and Specification