1

nations the father's authority over his sons came to an end when the son grew up and left his home. But here again we must distinguish between the legal rights of parents and the duties of children. There are numerous passages in the Greek writings which put filial piety on a par with the duties towards the gods."

4

Nor is there any evidence that the patria potestas of the Roman type ever prevailed in full in India, great though the father's or parent's authority has been, and still is, among the Hindus.3 Among the Vedic people the father seems to have been the head of the family only as long as he was able to be its protector and maintainer, decrepit parents being even allowed to die of starvation." According to some sacred books from a later age, the father and the mother have power to give, to sell, and to abandon their son, because "man formed of uterine blood and virile seed proceeds from his mother and his father as an effect from its cause"; however, an only son may not be given or received in adoption, nor is a woman allowed to give or receive a son except with her husband's permission." In other books it is said that "the gift or acceptance of a child and the right to sell or buy a child are not recognised," and that he who casts off his son-unless the son be guilty of a crime causing loss of caste-shall be fined by the king six hundred panas. But whatever be the legal rights of a parent, filial piety is a most stringent duty in the child." A man has three Atigurus, or specially venerable superiors: his father, mother, and spiritual teacher. To them he must always pay obedience. He must do what is agreeable and serviceable to them. He must never do anything without their leave. 10 "By honouring these three all that ought to be done by man is ac

7

1 Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthumer, p. 462. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, i. 75 sq.

2 Schinidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 141 sq.

3 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 231 sq. Rig Veda, i. 70. 5.

5 Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 328.

complished; that is clearly the highest duty, every other act is a subordinate duty."1 Similar feelings prevail among the modern Hindus. Sir W. H. Sleeman observes, "There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much reverenced by their sons as they are in India. in all classes of society." The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents, but between the son and his parents the reciprocity of rights and duties which have bound together the parent and child from infancy follows them to the grave. The sons are often actually tyrannised over by their mothers.3

According to ancient Russian laws, fathers had great power over their children; but it is not probable that a son could be sold as a slave.5 Baron von Haxthausen, who wrote before the Emancipation in 1861, says that "the patriarchal government, feelings, and organisation are in full activity in the life, manners, and customs of the Great Russians. The same unlimited authority which the father exercises over all his children is possessed by the mother over her daughters." It was a common custom. for a father to marry his young sons to full-grown women; and in Poland also, according to Nestor, a father used to select a bride for his son.7 According to Professor Bogišić, the power of the father is not so great among the Southern Slavs as among the Russians; but a son is not permitted to make a proposal of marriage to a girl against the will of his parents, whilst a daughter, of course, enjoys still less freedom of disposing of her own hand." According to a Slavonian maxim, "a father is like an earthly god to his son." 10

1 Laws of Manu, ii. 237.

Nelson, View of the Hindu Law, P. 56 sq. Ghani, Social Life and Morality in India,' in International Journal of Ethics, vii. 312.

* Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, i. 330 sqq. 4 Accurse, quoted by de Laurière, in Loysel, op. cit. i. 82.

5 Macieiowski, Slavische Rechtsgeschichte, iv. 404.

6 von Haxthausen, Russian Empire, ii. 229 sq.

7 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 234. Macieiowski, op. cit. ii. 189.

Maine, Early Law and Custom, p.

244, note.

9 Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 314, 320.

19 Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 243.

Among this group of peoples, also, we meet with reverence for the elder brother, for persons of a superior age generally, and, especially, for the aged.

Obedience on the part of the younger to the elder brother is strongly inculcated by Confucianism and Taouism.1 In ancient China the eldest son of the principal wife held so high a position that even his own father had to mourn for him at his death in the selfsame degree in which the son was bound to mourn for his father; 2 and in some provinces of Japan the elder brother or sister did not even go to the funeral of the younger. In Babylonia the elder brother occupied a privileged position in the family in relation to the younger. In one of the Mandæan writings it is said, "Honour your father and your mother and your elder brother as your father." 5 According to the sacred books of the Hindus, "the feet of elder brothers and sisters must be embraced, according to the order of their seniority"; "towards a sister of one's father and of one's mother, and towards one's own elder sister, one must behave as towards one's mother," though the mother is more venerable than they.7

Again, in ancient Mexico respect was paid not only by children to their parents but by the young to the old. Among the Yucatans "the young reverenced much the aged." In China persons of the lowest class who have attained to an unusual age have not infrequently been distinguished by the Emperor, 10 and even criminals with grey hairs are treated with regard.11 "Respect for elders," says Mencius, "is the working of righteousness"; 12 and it is said in Thai Shang that the good man "will respect the old and cherish the young.' A Japanese proverb runs, Regard an old man as thy father.” 14 We read in Leviticus, "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God." 15

"13

Venera

8 Clavigero, op. cit. i. 81. Cf. ibid. 332.

Landa, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, p. 178.

10 Davis, China, ii. 97.

11 Wells Williams, Middle Empire, i. 805.

12 Mencius, vii. 1. 15. 3.

13 Thai Shang, 3.

14 Griffis, Mikado's Empire, p. 505. 15 Leviticus, xix. 32. Cf. Job, xxxii. 1; Proverbs, xvi. 31, and xx. 29.

tion for the aged is emphatically inculcated by Islam.1 In the sacred books of India it is represented as a virtue.2 Herodotus states that the Egyptians resembled the Lacedæmonians in the reverence the young men paid to their elders.3 Plato says in his Laws' that everybody ought to consider that the elder has the precedence of the younger in honour, both among the gods as also among men who would live in security and happiness; wherefore it is a foolish thing and hateful to the gods to see an elder man assaulted by a younger in the city. Everybody ought to regard a person who is twenty years older than himself, whether male or female, as his father or mother, and to abstain from laying hands on any such person out of reverence to the gods who preside over birth." + Regard for old age lies behind such words as presbyter and the Anglo-Saxon ealdormonn; and all travellers among the Southern Slavs have noticed their extraordinary respect for old people.5

In Europe the paternal authority of the archaic type which we have just considered has gradually yielded to a system under which the father has been divested of the most essential rights he formerly possessed over his children a system the inmost drift of which is expressed in the words of the French Encyclopedist, "Le pouvoir paternel est plutôt un devoir qu'un pouvoir." Already in pagan times the Roman patria potestas became a shadow of what it had been. Under the Republic the abuses of paternal authority were checked by the censors, and in later times the Emperors reduced the father's power within comparatively narrow limits. Not only was the life of the child practically as sacred as that of the parent long before Christianity became the religion of Rome, but Alexander Severus ordained that heavy punishments should be inflicted on members of a family by the magistrate only. Diocletian and Maximilian took away the power of selling freeborn children as slaves. The father's privilege of

5 Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 243.

Encyclopédie méthodique, Jurisprudence, vii. 77, art. Puissance paternelle.

7 Supra, p. 393 sq.

dictating marriage for his sons declined into a conditional veto; and it seems that the daughters also, at length, gained a certain amount of freedom in the choice of a husband.1

3

The new religion was anything but unfavourable to this process of emancipation. The ethical precept of filial piety was changed by Christ. His church was a militant church. He had come not to send peace but a sword, "to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother." Being chiefly addressed to the young, the new teaching naturally caused much disorder in families. Fathers disinherited their converted sons, and children thought that they owed no duty to their parents where such a duty was opposed to the interests of their souls. According to Gregory the Great, we ought to ignore our parents, hating them and flying from them when they are an obstacle to us in the way of the Lord; and this became the accepted theory of the Church. Nay, it was not only in similar cases of conflict that Christianity exercised a weakening influence on family ties which had previously been regarded with religious veneration. In all circumstances the relationship between child and parent was put in the shade by the relationship between man and God. "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in Heaven." "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." At the same time the fifth commandment, though modified by considerations which would never have occurred to the mind of an orthodox Jew, was left formally intact. Obedience to parents was, in fact, repeatedly enjoined by St. Paul as a Christian duty. It was regarded as a pre

1 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 236. 2 St. Matthew, x. 34 sq. St. Luke, xii. 51 sqq.

Tertullian, Apologeticus, 3 (Migne, Patrologia cursus, i. 280 sq.).

St. Gregory the Great, Homilia in Evangelia, xxxvii. 2 (Migne, op. cit.

8

lxxvi. 1275).

6

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii.-ii. 101. 4.

6 St. Matthew, xxiii. 9.

1 St. Luke, xiv. 26.

* Ephesians, vi. 1 sqq. Colossians, iii. 20.