Now a single
will, in relation to an external and consequently contingent
possession, cannot serve as a compulsory law for all, because that
would be to do violence to the freedom which is in accordance with
universal laws. Therefore it is only a will that binds every one,
and as such a common, collective, and authoritative will, that can
furnish a guarantee of security to all. But the state of men under a
universal, external, and public legislation, conjoined with
authority and power, is called the civil state. There can therefore be
an external mine and thine only in the civil state of society.
Consequence.- It follows, as a corollary, that, if it is juridically
possible to have an external object as one's own, the individual
subject of possession must be allowed to compel or constrain every
person with whom a dispute as to the mine or thine of such a
possession may arise, to enter along with himself into the relations
of a civil constitution.
9. There May, However, Be an External Mine and Thine Found as
a Fact in the State of Nature, but it is only Provisory.
Natural right in the state of a civil constitution means the forms
of right which may be deduced from principles a priori as the
conditions of such a constitution. It is therefore not to be infringed
by the statutory laws of such a constitution; and accordingly the
juridical principle remains in force, that, "Whoever proceeds upon a
maxim by which it becomes impossible for me to have an object of the
exercise of my will as mine, does me a lesion or injury.
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