certain usage de la richesse; mais ce n'est pas le meme chose que
limiter la propriete.'[1] The community of user of the scholastics was
distinguished from that of modern Socialists not less strongly by the
motives which inspired it than by the effect it produced. The former
was dictated by high spiritual aims, and the contempt of material
goods; the latter is the fruit of over-attachment to material goods,
and the envy of their possessors.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, p. 43. The same writer shows that there is no
authority in Christian teaching for the proposition, advanced by many
Christian Socialists, that property is a 'social function' (_ibid._,
p. 774). The right of property even carried with it the _jus
abutendi_, which, however, did not mean the right to _abuse_, but
the right to destroy by consumption (see Antoine, _Cours d'Economie
sociale_, p. 526).]

[Footnote 2: Roscher, _op. cit._, p. 5: 'Vom neuern Socialismus
freilich unterscheidet sich diese Auffassung nicht blosz durch ihre
religioese Grundlage, sondern auch durch ihre, jedem Mammonsdienst
entgegengesetze, Verachtung der materiellen Gueter.']

The large estates which the Church itself owned have frequently been
pointed to as evidence of hypocrisy in its attitude towards the common
user of property. This is not the place to inquire into the condition
of ecclesiastical estates in the Middle Ages, but it is sufficient
to say that they were usually the centres of charity, and that in the
opinion of so impartial a writer as Roscher, they rather tended to
make the rules of using goods for the common use practicable than the
contrary.[1]

[Footnote 1: Roscher, _op. cit._, p. 6.]

SECTION 3.--PROPERTY IN HUMAN BEINGS

Before we pass from the subject of property, we must deal with a
particular kind of property right, namely, that of one human being
over another. At the present day the idea of one man being owned
by another is repugnant to all enlightened public opinion, but this
general repugnance is of very recent growth, and did not exist in
mediaeval Europe. In dealing with the scholastic attitude towards
slavery, we shall indicate, as we did with regard to its attitude
towards property in general, the fundamental harmony between the
teaching of the primitive and the mediaeval Church on the subject. No
apology is needed for this apparent digression, as a comparison of the
teaching of the Church at the two periods of its development helps us
to