The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
1. Of three ways by which a man becometh subject to another,
mentioned section 2, chapter the last, namely, voluntary offer,
captivity and birth, the former two have been spoken of, under the
name of subjects, and servants. In the next place, we are to set
down the third way of subjection, under the name of children, and by
what title one man cometh to have propriety in a child, that
proceedeth from the common generation of two; to wit, of male and
female. And considering men again dissolved from all covenants one
with another, and that (Part I. chap. IV. sect. 2) every man by the
law of nature, hath right or propriety to his own body, the child
ought rather to be the propriety of the mother, of whose body it is
part, till the time of separation, than of the father. For the
understanding therefore of the right that a man or woman hath to his
or their child, two things are to be considered; first, what title
the mother, or any other, originally hath, to a child new born:
secondly, how the father, or any other man, pretendeth by the
mother.
[Sidenote: Pre-eminence of sex giveth not the child to the father,
rather than to the mother.]
2. For the first, they that have written of this subject, have made
generation to be a title of dominion over persons, as well as the
consent of the persons themselves. And because generation giveth
title to two, namely, father and mother, whereas dominion is
indivisible, they therefore ascribe dominion over the child to the
father only, _ob præstantiam sexûs_; but they show not, neither can
I find out by what coherence, either generation inferreth dominion,
or advantage of so much strength, which, for the most part, a man
hath more than a woman, should generally and universally entitle the
father to a propriety in the child, and take it away from the
mother.
[Sidenote: The title of the father or mother, &c.]