Note 236 — LECTURE XV. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.

Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and right,—justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."