THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 433
ploughed it, as an antelope belongs to the first hunter who mortally wounds it" (Laws of Menu, ix. 44). Kant's philosophy of law is an extraordinary concatenation of errors all leading to each other, and he bases the right of property upon first occupation. To me this is only explicable on the supposition that his powers were failing through old age. For how should the mere avowal of my will to exclude others from the use of a thing at once give me a right to it? Clearly such an avowal itself requires a foundation of right, instead of being one, as Kant assumes. And how would he act unjustly in se, i.e., morally, who does not respect that claim to the sole possession of a thing which is based upon nothing but its own avowal? How should his conscience trouble him about it? For it is so clear and easy to understand that there can be absolutely no such thing as a just seizure of anything, but only a just conversion or acquired possession of it, by spending our own original powers upon it. When, by any foreign labour, however little, a thing has been cultivated, improved, kept from harm or preserved, even if this labour were only the plucking or picking up from the ground of fruit that has grown wild; the person who forcibly seizes such a thing clearly deprives the other of the result of his labour expended upon it, makes the body of this other serve his will instead of its own, asserts his will beyond its own phenomenon to the denial of that of the other, i.e., does injustice or wrong.[1] On the other hand, the mere enjoyment of a thing, without any cultivation or preservation of it from destruction, gives just as little right to it as the mere avowal of our desire for its sole possession. Therefore, though one family has hunted a district alone, even for a
- ↑ Thus the basis of natural right of property does not require the assumption of two grounds of right beside each other, that based on detention and that based on formation; but the latter is itself sufficient. Only the name formation is not very suitable, for the spending of any labour upon a thing does not need to be a forming or fashioning of it.
