170. It is not enough that the family has property, but, as a universal and lasting person, it needs a permanent and sure possession, or means. When property is treated abstractly, there occur at random the particular needs of the mere individual, and also the self-seeking of the appetites. These now take on an ethical aspect, and are changed into provision for a common interest.
Note.— In the wise sayings concerning the founding of states, the institution of a sure property makes its appearance in connection with the institution of marriage, or at least with the introduction of an orderly social life.’— When we come to the civic community, we shall see in what family competence consists, and how it is to be secured.
171. The husband is the head of the family, and when it, as a legal person, collides with other families, he is its representative. It is expected of him, further, to go out and earn its living, care for its needs, and administer the family means. This means is a common possession, to which each member has a common but not a special right. This general right and the husband’s right to dispose of the property may conflict, because the ethical sentiment (§158), which in the family is still in its simplest form, is subject to chance and violence.
172. Marriage establishes a new family, which has its own independent footing as against the stems or houses from which it has proceeded. The connection of the new family with these stems is consanguinity, but the principle of the new family is ethical love. Thus, the individual’s property is essentially allied to his marriage, and less intimately to his original stock or house.
Note.—A marriage-settlement, which imposes a limit to the common possession of goods by the wedded couple, or any other arrangement by which the right of the wife is retained, is intended to be security against the dissolution of the marriage-tie by death or divorce. In such an event the different members of the family are by this arrangement apportioned their shares of the common possession.
Addition.— In many law codes the more extended range of the family circle is retained. It is looked upon as the real bond of union, while the tie of the single family is regarded as comparatively unimportant. Thus in the older Roman law the wife of the lax marriage is more closely allied to her relatives than to her husband and children. In feudal times, also, the necessity of preserving the splendor familiae led to reckoning under the family only its male members. Thus the whole family connection was the chief object of concern, and the newlyformed family was placed in the background. Notwithstanding this, every new family is more essential than the wider circle bounded by the tie of consanguinity. A married couple with their children form a nucleus of their own in opposition to the more extended household. Hence the financial status of individuals must be more vitally connected with marriage than with the wider family union.