Acta Pii Pp. XII mi

inhérent vigour with the passage of time, and. today, fìfty years after, strike their roots deeper and retain their innate vitality. In Our Encyclical Sertum laetitiae directed to the bishops of the United States of America We called the attention of all to the basic idea of thèse principies which consists, as We said, in the assertion of the un- questionable need " that the goods, which were created by God for all men, should flow equally to all, according to the principies of justice and charity. "

Every man, as a living being gifted with reason, has in fact from nature the fundamental right to make use of the material goods of the earth, while it is lef t to the will of man and to the juridical Statutes of nations to regúlate in greater detail the actuation of this right. This individual right cannot in any way be suppressed, even by other clear and undisputed rights over material goods. Undoubtedly the natural order, derJLving from God, demands also private property and the free reciprocai commerce of goods by interchange and gift, as well as the functioning of the State as a control over both thèse institutions. But all this remains subordinated to the natural scope of material goods and cannot emancipate itself from the first and fundamental right which concedes their use to all men; but it should rather serve to make possible the actuation of this right in conformity with its scope. Only thus can we and must we secure that private property and the use of material goods bring to society peace and prosperity and long life, that they no longer set up precarious conditions which will give rise to struggles and jealousies, and which are left to the mercy of the blind interplay of force and weakness.

The native right to the use of material goods, intimately linked as it is to the dignity and other rights of the human per son, together with the STATUTES mentioned above, provides man with a secure material basis of the highest import, on which to rise to the fulfilment, with reasonable liberty, of his moral duties. The safe guardianship of this right will ensure the personal dignity of man, and will facilitate for him the attention to and fulfìlment of that sum of stable duties and décisions for which he is directly responsible to his Creator. Man has in truth the entirely personal duty to preserve and order to perfection his material and spiritual life, so as to secure the religious and moral scope which God has assigned to all men, and has given them as the supreme norm obliging always and every where, before all other duties.

To safeguard the inviolable sphère of the rights of the human person and to facilitate the fulfílment of his duties should be the essential