manner of M. Cousin, who always reasons from possession to property. This coincidence, however, does not surprise me. M. Cousin is a philosopher of much mind, and you, proletaires, have still more. Certainly it is honorable, even for a philosopher, to be your companion in error.
Originally, the word property was synonymous with proper or individual possession. It designated each individual’s special right to the use of a thing. But when this right of use, inert (if I may say so) as it was with regard to the other usufructuaries, became active and paramount,—that is, when the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the thing into the right to use it by his neighbor’s labor,—then property changed its nature, and its idea became complex. The legists knew this very well, but instead of opposing, as they ought, this accumulation of profits, they accepted and sanctioned the whole. And as the right of farm-rent necesarily [sic] implies the right of use,—in other words, as the right to cultivate land by the labor of a slave supposes one’s power to cultivate it himself, according to the principle that the greater includes the less,—the name property was reserved to designate this double right, and that of possession was adopted to designate the right of use. Whence property came to be called the perfect right, the right of domain, the eminent right, the heroic or quiritaire right,—in Latin, jus perfectum, jus optimum, jus quiritarium, jus dominii, while possession became assimilated to farm-rent.
Now, that individual possession exists of right, or, better, from natural necessity, all philosophers admit, and can easily be demonstrated; but when, in imitation of M. Cousin, we assume it to be the basis of the domain of property, we fall into the sophism called sophisma amphiboliæ vel ambiguitatis, which consists in changing the meaning by a verbal equivocation.
