Principles of Morals and

186/Jeremy Bentham
sure of the sexual appetites. This pleasure, then, if reaped at all, must
have been reaped either against the consent of the party, or with con-
sent. If with consent, the consent must have been obtained either freely
and fairly both, or freely but not fairly, or else not even freely; in which
case the fairness is out of the question. If the consent be altogether want-
ing, the offence is called rape: if not fairly obtained, seduction simply:
if not freely, it may be called forcible seduction. In any case, either the
offence has gone the length of consummation, or has stopped short of
that period; if it has gone that length, it takes one or other of the names
just mentioned: if not, it may be included alike in all cases under the
denomination of a simple lascivious injury. Lastly, to take the case where
a man injuring you in your reputation, by proceedings that regard your
person, does it for the sake of that sort of pleasure which will sometimes
result from the contemplation of another’s pain. Under these circum-
stances either the offence has actually gone the length of a corporal
injury, or it has rested in menacement: in the first case it may be styled
a corporal insult; in the other, it may come under the name of insulting
menacement. And thus we have six genera, or kind of offences, against
person and reputation together; which, when ranged in the order most
commodious for consideration, will stand thus: 1. Corporal insults. 2.
Insulting menacement. 3. Seduction. 4. Rape. 5. Forcible seduction. 6.
Simple lascivious injuries.
XXXVII. Secondly, with respect to those which affect person and
property together. That a force put upon the person of a man may be
among the means by which the title to property may be unlawfully taken
away or acquired, has been already stated. A force of this sort then is a
circumstance which may accompany the offences of wrongful intercep-
tion, wrongful divestment, usurpation, and wrongful investment. But in
these cases the intervention of this circumstance does not happen to
have given any new denomination to the offence. In all or any of these
cases, however, by prefixing the epithet forcible, we may have so many
names of offences, which may either be considered as constituting so
many species of the genera belonging to the division of offences against
property, or as so many genera belonging to the division now before us.
Among the offences that concern the enjoyment of the thing, the case is
the same with wrongful destruction and wrongful endamagement; as
also with wrongful occupation and wrongful detainment. As to the of-
fence of wrongful occupation, it is only in the case where the thing
occupied belongs to the class of immovables, that, when accompanied

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/187
by the kind of force in question, has obtained a particular name which is
in common use: in this case it is called forcible entry: forcible detain-
ment, as applied also to immovables, but only to immovables, has ob-
tained, among lawyers at least, the name of forcible detainer. And thus
we may distinguish ten genera, or kinds of offences, against person and
property together, which, omitting for conciseness’ sake the epithet
wrongful, will stand thus: 1. Forcible interception of property. 2. Forc-
ible divestment of property. 3. Forcible usurpation. 4. Forcible invest-
ment. 5. Forcible destruction or endamagement. 6. Forcible occupation
of movables. 7. Forcible entry. 8. Forcible detainment of movables. 9.
Forcible detainment of immovables. 10. Robbery.
XXXVIII. We come now to offences against condition. A man’s
condition or station in life is constituted by the legal relation he bears to
the persons who are about him; that is, as we have already had occasion
to show, by duties, which, by being imposed on one side, give birth to
rights or powers on the other. These relations, it is evident, may be
almost infinitely diversified. Some means, however, may be found of
circumscribing the field within which the varieties of them are displayed.
In the first place, they must either be such as are capable of displaying
themselves within the circle of a private family, or such as require a
larger space. The conditions constituted by the former sort of relations
may be styled domestic: those constituted by the latter, civil.
XXXIX. As to domestic conditions, the legal relations by which
they are constituted may be distinguished into 1. Such as are superadded
to relations purely natural: and 2. Such as, without any such natural
basis, subsist purely by institution. By relations purely natural, I mean
those which may be said to subsist between certain persons in virtue of
the concern which they themselves, or certain other persons, have had in
the process which is necessary to the continuance of the species. These
relations may be distinguished, in the first place, into contiguous and
uncontiguous. The uncontiguous subsist through the intervention of such
as are contiguous. The contiguous may be distinguished, in the first
place, into connubial, and post-connubial. Those which may be termed
connubial are two: 1. That which the male bears towards the female: 2.
That which the female bears to the male. The post-connubial are either
productive or derivative. The productive is that which the male and
female above-mentioned bear each of them towards the children who
are the immediate fruit of their union; this is termed the relation of
parentality. Now as the parents must be, so the children may be, of

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