ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIH. 117
protected, such association were rather to be repudiated than sought after.
16. The idea, then, that the civil government should, at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly friendless, and without prospect of help, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid ; for each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the walls of the household there occur grave dis- turbance of mutual rights, the public power must inter- fere to force each party to give the other what is due ; for this is not to rob citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the State must go no further : nature bids them stop here. Paternal authority can neither be abol- ished by the State, nor absorbed; for it has the same source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality ; and, to speak with strictness, the child takes its place in civil society not in its own right, but in its quality as a member of the family in which it is begotten. And it is for the very reason that " the child belongs to the father " that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says, " before it attains the use of free will, it is in the power and care of its parents."* The Socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and introducing the providence of the State, act against natural justice, and threaten the very existence of family life.
17. And such interference is not only unjust, but it is quite certain to harass and disturb all classes of citizens and to subject them to odious and intolerable slavery. It would open the door to envy, to evil speaking, and to
- St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2se Q. x. Art. 12.
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