1. That parents have now no right of life and death upon their children as they have had under certain legislations. 2. That they have neither the right to strike them, maltreat them, wound them--in short, treat them as they would animals or things; and although usage appears to allow certain corporeal punishments, it will always be a bad example and a bad habit to use blows as a means of education. 3. Parents have no right to traffic with the liberty of their sons, to sell them as slaves as in ancient times, or to turn them into instruments of gain, as in many families even to this day. Certainly one could not wholly forbid a father to make a child work toward the support of the family, but it must be done without losing sight of the child's strength, and without sacrificing its intellectual and moral education. 4. Parents have no right to corrupt their children, by making them accomplices in their own profligacy. Grotius justly distinguishes three periods in paternal authority:[77] the first, when the children have as yet no discernment, and are not capable of acting with full knowledge; the second, when their judgment, being already ripe, they are still members of the family and have no business of their own; the last, when they have left their father's house, either to become heads of families themselves, or to enter into another. In the first of these conditions, the will of the parents is entirely substituted for that of the children, and their authority, within the limits above stated, is consequently absolute. In the third case, the son, having reached his majority or maturity, has conquered for himself an independent will; paternal authority must consequently change into moral influence, which a grateful son will respect, but which is no longer, properly so called, an authority. Finally, in the intermediate state, which is the most difficult of all, the paternal will, whilst remaining preponderant, yields more and more to the will of the children, thereby preparing it toward becoming sufficient to itself. Let us examine the duties of the parents at these different periods of paternal authority. There is, to begin with, a general duty, which overrules the whole life of the parents as well as of the children, and which is independent of the latter's age: it is the duty of love. Parents must love their children; it is the foundation of all the rest. It may perhaps be objected that love is a natural feeling and cannot be a duty; that the heart is not subject to the will; that one may love or not love, according as one is by nature so constituted; that duty therefore has nothing to do with it. It is also said that paternal or maternal love is so natural a sentiment that it is useless to make a duty of it.