 Herilic or master-slave relationships are similar to but stricter than parental ties, and they have no natural expiration point. They too are based on express or tacit pacts, with no natural basis beside the qualifying suitability of some persons to rule and others to be ruled (DJN VI.3.1–2) – which, alone, is insufficient to justify them. Pufendorf conceives them as sovereignty- rather than as property-relationships (DJN VI.3.7), strictly speaking, and regards slaves not as things but as “perpetual mercenaries” (DJN VI.3.4) who always retain an “intrinsic liberty of the will” (DJN VI.3.10). Slavery (or servitude – the category is wider or more diverse than often acknowledged) does not extinguish the laws of humanity or erase all traces of humans’ original equality, even though it is possible for them to bargain away (permanently) their freedom to command themselves (DJN VI.3.9). Even the offspring of slaves may be retained in that status, especially when it has been entered through war, although humanity (vs. right) favors their liberation. States may regulate herilic relationships like marital and parental ties, for appropriate reasons, even though they often do not interfere. Slavery may be ended by manumission, banishment, a failure to specify the status of slaves in one’s will, and – notably – by putting a slave into chains (except for a crime, or as punishment). In the last case and any other unjustified deprivation of bodily freedom, a slave is released from his initial, pact-based obligation, which depends on reciprocity: “For there is no pact unless contractors trust each other, and faith cannot be violated where it does not exist.” That is, physical bonds replace or sublate moral ones, and in such a case a slave is free to go (i.e., run away) (DJN VI.3.6, 3.11). These reasons are similar to those why the civil bond between ruler and ruled may be broken.