But, instead of strengthening the case, he shifts its ground in such a way as completely to surrender it. It was not at all necessary to his argument from "delicacy" that he should deny the bearing of moral considerations upon the question; but this he has done in a way that, so far as it has any influence at all, will strengthen the hands of the inveterate enemies of copyright. He intensifies the discords upon a subject which many seem bent upon befogging and distracting by all the arts of ingenious sophistry. He professes to be friendly to copyright, and then reasons his way to the destruction of all copyright by denying that there is any right or wrong in the matter. This reasoning is as follows: "Now, for me the matter is simplified by my believing that men, if they go into their own minds and deal quite freely with their own consciousness, will find that they have not any natural rights at all. And as it so happens with a difficult matter of dispute, so it happens here: the difficulty, the embarrassment, the need for drawing subtile distinctions and for devising subtile means of escape from them when the right of property is under discussion, arise from one's having first built up the idea of natural right as a wall to run one's head against. An author has no natural right to a property in his production. But then neither has he a natural right to anything whatever which he may produce or acquire. What is true is, that a man has a strong instinct making him seek to possess what he has produced or acquired, to have it at his disposal; that he finds pleasure in so having it, and finds profit. The instinct is natural and salutary, although it may be over-stimulated and indulged to excess. One of the first objects of men in combining themselves in society has been to afford to the individual, in his pursuit of this instinct, the sanction and assistance of the laws so far as may be consistent with the general advantage of the community. The author, like other people, seeks the pleasure and the profit of having at his own disposal what he produces. Literary production, wherever it is sound, is its own exceeding great reward; but that does not destroy or diminish the author's desire and claim to be allowed to have at his disposal, like other people, that which he produces, and to be free to turn it to account."
Mr. Arnold here discredits as groundless and illusory that whole order of ethical conceptions which we have been wont to regard as fundamental in relation to human conduct. Whether he scouts all morality does not appear, but he denies it at least in one class of human actions. Though dealing with transactions between man and man which involve the ideas of "possession," "appropriation of property," "robbery," "criminality," "penalty," etc., he never refers to such things as "justice," "equity," "duty," "right," and "wrong," or any principles of obligation. Though all men recognize these conceptions, though the government of society is founded upon them, and though men are fined, imprisoned, and strangled, accordingly as their actions fail to conform to these fundamental ideas, yet Mr. Arnold airily waives them all aside as irrelevant and impertinent in relation to the subject he is discussing. The reader will notice the wordy circuits by which he avoids all the moral elements of the inquiry. To get rid of any question of rights in this matter, he plucks up by the roots and casts to the winds all natural rights. To him who claims a right to life he virtually says: "Oh! no; you have an instinct to live, which is natural and salutary. You find pleasure in life, but it is its own exceeding great reward, and society graciously allows you to have it at your disposal; but you have no natural right in the matter." He maintains that a man has no right of property in his productions, except "so far as the law may choose
