between thine and mine, true signs of equality, not, by any means, of subordination. “From equivocation to equivocation,” says M. Michelet,[1] “property would crawl to the end of the world; man could not limit it, were not he himself its limit. Where they clash, there will be its frontier.” In short, individuality of being destroys the hypothesis of communism, but it does not for that reason give birth to domain,—that domain by virtue of which the holder of a thing exercises over the person who takes his place a right of prestation and suzerainty, that has always been identified with property itself.
Further, that he whose legitimately acquired possession injures nobody cannot be nonsuited without flagrant injustice, is a truth, not of intuition, as M. Troplong says, but of inward sensation,[2] which has nothing to do with property.
M. Troplong admits, then, occupancy as a condition of property. In that, he is in accord with the Roman law, in accord with MM. Toullier and Duranton; but in his opinion this condition is not the only one, and it is in this particular that his doctrine goes beyond theirs.
- ↑ “Origin of French Law.”
- ↑ To honor one’s parents, to be grateful to one’s benefactors, to neither kill nor steal,—truths of inward sensation. To obey God rather than men, to render to each that which is his; the whole is greater than a part, a straight line is the shortest road from one point to another,—truths of intuition. All are à priori but the first are felt by the conscience, and imply only a simple act of the soul; the second are perceived by the reason, and imply comparison and relation. In short, the former are sentiments, the latter are ideas.
