Note 42 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

We see that the term “possession” may well be used here. Yet there is a reason that induces us not to call these children slaves, a reason resembling that for which we have excluded the subjected wives. These children may be called the property of their fathers; but this is not the whole, nor even the main part of their condition. The relation between father and child, if it includes subjection, includes much more. There is mutual sympathy and in many respects a coincidence of interests; there is respect on the side of the child; there is on the side of the father a desire to promote the welfare of the child, however much bound up with egotistical motives. There is also physical and mental superiority on the side of the father and inferiority on the side of the child42; and this in some cases may bring about a somewhat slave-like condition of the latter; but this condition is not an essential part of the relation between father and child; a fortiori it is not coextensive with the relation, as in the case of the slave. Biologically expressed: the child is quite another organ, with quite another function, but in some cases performing in some degree the function of a slave; therefore it is not a slave. We may add, that the child is only temporarily subjected; one day he will be a master himself43. This also bears upon the treatment of the child: the slave is brought up to servility, the child to authority. Children can never form a subjected class.