“Who kindly sets a wand'rer on his wayIn this example he effectively teaches us all to bestow even upon a stranger what it costs us nothing to give.
Does e'en as if he lit another's lamp by his:
No less shines his, when he his friend's hath lit.
”
[51]
This, then, is the most comprehensive bond that
unites together men as men and all to all; and
under it the common right to all things that Nature
has produced for the common use of man is to be
maintained, with the understanding that, while
everything assigned as private property by the
statutes and by civil law shall be so held as prescribed by those same laws, everything else shall be
regarded in the light indicated by the Greek proverb: “Amongst friends all things in common.”1
Furthermore, we find the common property of all
men in things of the sort defined by Ennius; and,
though restricted by him to one instance, the principle may be applied very generally:
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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