" For a
civil constitution is only the juridical condition under which every
one has what is his own merely secured to him, as distinguished from
its being specially assigned and determined to him. All guarantee,
therefore, assumes that everyone to whom a thing is secured is already
in possession of it as his own. Hence, prior to the civil
constitution- or apart from it- an external mine and thine must be
assumed as possible, and along with it a right to compel everyone with
whom we could come into any kind of intercourse to enter with us
into a constitution in which what is mine or thine can be secured.
There may thus be a possession in expectation or in preparation for
such a state of security, as can only be established on the law of the
common will; and as it is therefore in accordance with the possibility
of such a state, it constitutes a provisory or temporary juridical
possession; whereas that possession which is found in reality in the
civil state of society will be a peremptory or guaranteed
possession. Prior to entering into this state, for which he is
naturally prepared, the individual rightfully resists those who will
not adapt themselves to it, and who would disturb him in his provisory
possession; because, if the will of all except himself were imposing
upon him an obligation to withdraw from a certain possession, it would
still be only a one-sided or unilateral will, and consequently it
would have just as little legal title- which can be properly based
only on the universalized will- to contest a claim of right as he
would have to assert it.
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