Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/517

491 KEENER ON QUASI-CONTRACTS, 491 hold true, and would result, not in a new definition of the indi- vidual's ethical status, but in the discovery of new terms for rela- tions already clearly defined. His right and duty would be the same, but those from whom they are due and to whom they are owed might be different. Human beings are more than organisms ; they are persons, with the power of freely conceiving purposes and of freely communi- cating them. In this power of conceiving and communicating purposes lie's the. power of promising their fulfilment. Now it requires no argument to show that upon the general fulfilment of promises depends the whole fabric of society. The vast and intri- cate system of commercial credit is but one empirical proof of this proposition. If the usual custom were to break promises instead of keeping them, three generations would suffice to restore the civilized world to utter barbarism. The social interest lends, there- fore, as one exemplification of the law of reciprocity, to every promise the sanction of organic obligation. The promise, in other words, being a voluntary relation established between members of an organism which, without the organic law, would be optional and terminable at will, is with it affected with the organic charac- ter, and is therefore obligatory. Such obligations, of course, are defined by the parties, and are precisely determined by the terms of the consent, and may therefore be as various as thought itself. Their variety, however, does not defeat their obligatory character, and promises are to be classed as a third group of ethical relations. The rights thus deduced from the organic idea may be classified as follows : — ^ . (A. Rie:ht of freedom. Organic, B. Right to co-operation. Personal . . C. Consensual rights. This classification of rights is exhaustive. They are deduced from man's relations to the external universe and from his own internal constitution, and these are the only sources from which such deductions can be drawn. It remains to consider the relations of law to ethics, and thence to deduce a classification of legal rights. The law of reciprocity commands society as well as the indi- vidual. Society has its right of freedom, and also its duty of co- operation. Its organization in the form of states and nations is but the means to these two ends, and in particular the establish- ment of tribunals of justice is a means both to its self-development