It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you. I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the communication of truth,--all are not capable of it at the same moment and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor its progress towards truth. I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify them. I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself; and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves, yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some souls by a regular and consecrated affection,--to this need the family responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,--it only requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all ties--father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of its parents--to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is perhaps its most sacred possession. I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and even constraint. I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise; and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the free will that has transmitted them to you.[235] Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a right is an injustice. Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,--to retrench the least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.