A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of brothers, establish the strength, security, and conservation of the family: brothers united defend themselves against all oppression, they aid one another in their wants, they help one another in their misfortunes, and thus secure their common existence; while brothers disunited, abandoned each to his own personal strength, fall into all the inconveniences attendant on an insulated state and individual weakness. This is what a certain Scythian king ingeniously expressed when, on his death-bed, calling his children to him, he ordered them to break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though strong, being unable to effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing them, broke each of the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said he, "the effects of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken separately, you will be broken like reeds." Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants? A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively and justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for the rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all society. Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting from the fundamental law of nature in his formation. CHAPTER XI. THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE. Q. What is society? A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of an expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common preservation. Q. Are the social virtues numerous? A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to society; but all may be reduced to one principle. Q. What is that fundamental principle? A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society. Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue of society? A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity, generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you do not wish to be done to yourself," which is the definition of justice. Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice? A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man. Q. What are those attributes? A. They are equality, liberty, and property. Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?