Disowned (9-11)

Accordingly, since it is within your powers, since my father controls only the charge, and you who sit in judgement control the decision whether his accusation is reasonable, do not yet consider his specific allegation against me and the ground of his present indignation, but first examine that other point, whether he should still be allowed to disown a son when, after once for all disowning him, using the privilege that derives from the law and exercising to the full this paternal suzerainty, he has subsequently

taken him back again and annulled the disownment. I say that such a thing is most unjust—for punishments, precisely in the case of children, to be interminable, their condemnations numerous, and their fear eternal; for the law at one moment to share the prosecutor’s anger, only soon afterward to relax, and then again to be as severe as before; in a word, for justice to be altered this way and that to conform to the momentary opinion of fathers. No, the first time it is right to give the parent free rein, to share his anger with him, to make him arbiter of the punishment; but if, once for all, he expends his privilege, makes full use of the law, satisfies his anger, and then afterwards takes back his son, persuaded that he deserves it, he must abide by it, and not keep shifting, changing his mind, and altering his decision.

When that son was born there was no way, of course, to ascertain whether he would turn out to be bad or good, and on that account the privilege of repudiating children who are unworthy of their family has been allowed to their parents, since they determined to bring them up at a time when they were unaware ofthis.

When, however, under no constraint but able to do as he pleases, a man himself, of his own motion and after putting his son to the test, takes him back, what pretext for change of mind remains, or what further recourse to the law? The legislator would say to you: “If he was bad and deserved to be disowned, what made you ask him back? Why did you readmit him to your house? Why did you nullify the law? You were free and at liberty not to do this. Surely it cannot be conceded that you should make sport of the laws and that

the courts should be convened to suit your changes of mind, that the laws should be relaxed one moment and enforced the next and the jurors sit to register, or rather to execute, your decisions, inflicting a penalty at one time, bringing you together at another, as often as it shall please you. You begat him once for all, you brought him up once for all, and have once for all, in return for this, the power to disown him, and then only if you are held to be doing it justly. This persistence, this interminability, this prodigious casualness is beyond the legal right of a father.”

In Heaven’s name, gentlemen of the jury, do not permit him, once he has effected the reinstatement of his own free will, set aside the decision of the former court, and nullified his anger, to reinvoke the same penalty and to recur to the right of a father when its term by now is over and done with, inoperative in his case alone because it is already used up. You perceive, surely, that in all courts where jurors are drawn by lot, if a man thinks that the verdict is unjust, the law allows him to appeal from them to another tribunal; but if people have themselves of their own accord agreed upon jurors and willingly committed the arbitrament to them, that is not then the case. For there was no need to consult them at all; but if a man has selected them of his own choice, he ought to remain content with their decision. So it is with you: a son who seemed to you unworthy of his lineage need never have been taken back, but one whom you have pronounced good and taken

back again you will not thereafter be able to disown; for you yourself have borne witness that he does not deserve to undergo this again, and have acknowledged that he is good. It is fitting, therefore, that his reinstatement should be irrevocable and the reconciliation binding after deliberation so oft-repeated, and two sessions of court, one (the first) in which you repudiated him, the other (your own) when you changed your mind and undid it. By setting aside the earlier decision you have guaranteed your later determination. Abide, then, by your latest purpose and maintain your own verdict; you must be a father, for that is what you decided, what you approved, what you ratified.