For this
purpose, however, it founds upon the principle of the possibility of
an external compulsion, such as may coexist with the freedom of
every one according to universal laws. Accordingly, then, where it
is said that a creditor has a right to demand from a debtor the
payment of his debt, this does not mean merely that he can bring him
to feel in his mind that reason obliges him to do this; but it means
that he can apply an external compulsion to force any such one so to
pay, and that this compulsion is quite consistent with the freedom
of all, including the parties in question, according to a universal
law. Right and the title to compel, thus indicate the same thing.
The law of right, as thus enunciated, is represented as a reciprocal
compulsion necessarily in accordance with the freedom of every one,
under the principle of a universal freedom. It is thus, as it were,
a representative construction of the conception of right, by
exhibiting it in a pure intuitive perception a priori, after the
analogy of the possibility of the free motions of bodies under the
physical law of the equality of action and reaction. Now, as in pure
mathematics, we cannot deduce the properties of its objects
immediately from a mere abstract conception, but can only discover
them by figurative construction or representation of its
conceptions; so it is in like manner with the principle of right.
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