The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

For property, which is not taken from a man without wrong, can, according to our explanation of wrong, only be that which has been produced by his own powers. Therefore by taking this we really take the powers of his body from the will objectified in it, to make them subject to the will objectified in another body. For only so does the wrong-doer, by seizing, not the body of another, but a lifeless thing quite different from it, break into the sphere of the assertion of will of another person, because the powers, the work of this other body, are, as it were, incorporated and identified with this thing. It follows from this that all true, i.e., moral, right of property is based simply and solely on work, as was pretty generally assumed before Kant, and is distinctly and beautifully expressed in the oldest of all codes of law : “ Wise men whoknoM^the^Mt. explain, that a cultured field is the property of him who cut down tie wood and cleared and

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Roughed it, as an antelope belongs to the first hunter ^o mortally wounds it ” (Laws of M^u, ix. 44^ Kant’s pliilosopliy 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 alisolutely 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.

On the other hand, the mere enjoyment of a tiling, 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 sufficient. Only the name foi^niaof property does not require the tion is not very suitable, for the assumption of two grounds of right spending of any labour upon a thing beside each other, that based on does not need to be a forming or detention and that based on for- fashioning of it. motion ; but the latter is itself

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

hundred years, but has done nothing for its improvement ; if a stranger comes and desires to hunt there, it cannot prevent him from doing so without moral injustice. Thus the so-called right of preoccupation, according to which, for the mere past enjoyment of a thing, there is demanded the further recompense of the exclusive right to its future enjoyment, is morally entirely without foundation. A new-comer might with far better right reply to him who was depending upon such a right, “Just because you have so long enjoyed, it is right that others should now enjoy also.” No moral right can be established to the sole possession of anything upon which labour cannot be expended, either in improving it or in preserving it from harm, unless it be through a voluntary surrender on the part of others, as a reward for other services. This, however, already presupposes a community regulated by agreement— the State. The morally established right of property, as we have deduced it above, gives, from its nature, to the owner of a thing, the same unlimited power over it which he has over his own body ; and hence it follows that he can part with his possessions to others either in exchange or as a gift, and they then possess them with the same moral right as he did.