Selections from Three Works. Francisco Suárez
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an act which can be performed only by the community acting as a community; a fact which is made evident by the statutes of various societies, universities, [cathedral] chapters, colleges, &c., providing for certain points in connexion with the public and common acts of that mystical body. For such laws are true laws, provided that they satisfy the other requisite conditions, even though their commands be laid upon one
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individual community only, if that community is a perfect one; as I shall presently explain.18 This is true because, in the first place, although it may be called a fictitious person, it is a community in an absolute sense, has the perpetuity required of law, and relates directly to the common good. Secondly, moreover, the individual members of that community are always bound through such a law to refrain from operating or co-operating in opposition to it.
18. Of what nature a community must be, in order that it may be capable of [subjection to] law in the strict sense. But some one will inquire, and not without reason, what must be the nature of a community that is capable of [subjection to] law in the strict sense.
I reply briefly that different kinds of community suffice or are required in accordance with different kinds of law.
How many different kinds of community there are. In the first place, then, a distinction may be made with respect to communities. For there is a certain natural form of community, brought about solely through the conformity [of its members] in rational nature. Of this sort is the community of humankind, which is found among all men. Another form, however, may be termed the political or mystical community, constituted through a special conjunction in the case of a group that is morally a unit. The natural law relates to the former type of community, this law being revealed to every man by the light of reason; since it is established, not for any one individual as such (not because he is Peter, for example), but for each person as a human being. This observation may be made in regard both to the purely natural law, and to the supernatural law, in so far as the latter is connatural to grace.
The latter form of community may be subdivided.
For certain [examples of it] may be thought of as additions to nature, yet brought about not by human but by divine law, in that they have been established by God Himself, under some head designated by Him, and with a unity directed toward some supernatural end. In former times, the Jewish synagogue was a community of this kind; and now, a much more perfect example is the Catholic Church, which was founded not for
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one or another people but for the whole world, by Christ Himself, under one and the same faith, which was to be professed through certain signs established by Christ and under obligation of obedience to one [visible] head to whom He Himself entrusted His representation upon earth. For this sort of community, then, positive divine laws are by their very nature primarily made. For example, the Old Law was given to the Jewish people, and the law of grace, for the Universal Church. Canon laws, too, are made for this same body, though not all of them are established for the Universal Church at large; rather, they are established in accordance with the intent or the power of the person who decrees them, as we shall see later.19
19. In addition to these forms of the community, there is that which has been humanly assembled or devised, and which is spoken of as a gathering of men who are united under the bond of some law. Examples may be drawn from the Digest (XII. i. 27) and from the Decretals (Bk. V, tit. XXXI, chap. xiv), and the Gloss thereon. These passages make it clear that a multitude of men does not suffice to constitute a community, unless those men are bound together by a particular agreement, looking toward a particular end, and existing under a particular head.
So, also, Aristotle has said (Politics, Bk. III, chap. x [chap. ix]) that a state is a multitude of citizens who have, indeed, a mutual bond of a moral nature. This kind of community, moreover, is wont to be divided by the moral philosophers and the jurists into perfect and imperfect. A perfect community is in general defined as one which is capable of possessing a political government; and this [type of community], in so far as it is such, is said to be self-sufficient within that [political] order. Thus Aristotle (ibid., Bk. I, chap. i) and St. Thomas (I.–II, qu. 90, art. 2) have asserted that the city state is a perfect community, and that, a fortiori, a kingdom or any other higher body or community of which the city state is a part will be a perfect community. For there may be a certain latitude in [the definition of] these communities, and even though individual ones, viewed in themselves, may be perfect, nevertheless that community which is part of another is in this respect imperfect; not in an absolute sense, but comparatively or relatively speaking. Again, among the communities in question,
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some are called real or local, because they are enclosed within certain real or local boundaries, as in the case of a city state or of a kingdom; while others are called personal, because they are considered in connexion with persons rather than with localities; as in the case of any religious community, for example, or confraternity, or similar group, which may also be perfect communities if they have perfect government and a moral unity. On this [personal kind of community], one may consult the jurists (Digest, III. iv. 1 et seq.20 and XLVII. xxii).
20. What is an imperfect community? The term ‘imperfect community’ may, indeed, be applied not simply in a relative but in an absolute sense to a private household over which there presides the paterfamilias. This possibility has been noted by St. Thomas (I.–II, qu. 90, art. 3, ad 3) and by Soto (thereon; and De Iustitia, Bk. V [Bk. I], qu. i, art. 2) and it may be inferred from Aristotle, in the passage quoted above.
One reason, to be sure, is that such a community is not self-sufficient, as we shall presently explain. A further reason is that in such a household the individuals are not united as the principal members for the composition of one political body, but merely exist therein as inferiors destined for the uses of the master, and to the extent that they are, in some sense, under his dominion. Therefore, a community of this sort, per se and within its proper limits, is governed not by a true power of jurisdiction but by the power of dominion, so that it partakes, according to the diversity of dominions, of diverse kinds of command with regard to diverse [persons]. For there is one right, or dominion, so to speak, held by the paterfamilias over his wife; another, over his children; and another, over his servants or slaves. Consequently, neither [a private household] possesses a perfect unity or uniform power, nor indeed, does it enjoy a truly political government; and therefore, such a community is called imperfect, without qualification.
21. Human laws ought to be framed only for perfect communities. Accordingly, this distinction having been assumed to exist, it should be stated that human laws may properly be laid down for any perfect community, but not for one that is imperfect.
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The first part of this statement is proved by the fact that every perfect community is a true political body, governed by means of its own jurisdiction, which has a coercive force that is legislative. Furthermore, the precepts and rules of living propounded for such a community, if they fulfil the other conditions required for law, may constitute legal justice and the mean to be observed in every matter of virtue befitting the said community; and therefore, these rules or precepts will have the true nature of law. Finally, even as that community is perfect, just so a precept imposed upon it may in an absolute sense be called a common precept, and therefore, a law.
22. The second part [of the same statement] is suggested with sufficient force in Aristotle’s Ethics (Bk. X, last chapter) and by a passage in St. Thomas (I.–II, qu. 90, art. 3, ad 3), in that these authorities maintain that a community consisting of one household is not sufficient [as a source] for law, in the proper sense of the term. The reason supporting this doctrine may be drawn from Aristotle’s argument that there is not found, in such a community, the true jurisdiction, nor the coercive force, required in the case of a true lawgiver. The reason, in turn, on which this contention is based, is the quasi-natural imperfection of that community, inasmuch as the latter is not in itself sufficient to attain human happiness in the mode in which such happiness is humanly attainable. Or, to put the matter more clearly, the parts of the said community do not furnish one another sufficient support or mutual aid, such as human society requires for its own ends or its own preservation;