Author's Preface
those rights, but his own person, is at stake; the man who, placed in such a condition, does not feel impelled to assert himself and his rights, cannot be helped, and I have no interest in trying to convert him. Such a man is a type which must simply be acknowledged to be a fact. Egotism, without any redeeming quality, and materialism are the traits which distinguish him. He would not be the Sancho Panza of the law if he did not see a Don Quixote in every one who, in the assertion of his rights, looked to any other interests than the most grossly material. To him I have nothing to say but these words of Kant, with which I was not acquainted until after the appearance of the last edition: “When a man has made a worm of himself, he cannot complain if he is trampled under foot.”[1] In another place Kant calls this “the casting of one’s rights under the feet of others, and the violation of man’s duty to himself.” And from “duty in relation to the dignity of
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