be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself
vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in
only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the
end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge
freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where
there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from
restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no
law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do
what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man's humour
might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he
lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within
the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be
subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.
Sec. 58. The power, then, that parents have over their children,
arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their
off-spring, during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind,
and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall
take its place, and ease them of that trouble, is what the children want,
and the parents are bound to: for God having given man an understanding
to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will, and liberty of
acting, as properly belonging thereunto, within the bounds of that law he
is under. But whilst he is in an estate, wherein he has not
understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to have any will
of his own to follow: he that understands for him, must will for him too;
he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his actions; but when he
comes to the estate that made his father a freeman, the son is a freeman
too.
Sec. 59. This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural
or civil. Is a man under the law of nature? What made him free of that
law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to his own