Yet be has the advantage on his side, of
being in accord with the conditions requisite to the introduction
and institution of a civil form of society. In a word, the mode in
which anything external may be held as one's own in the state of
nature, is just physical possession with a presumption of right thus
far in its favour, that by union of the wills of all in a public
legislation it will be made juridical; and in this expectation it
holds comparatively, as a kind of potential juridical possession.
This prerogative of right, as arising from the fact of empirical
possession, is in accordance with the formula: "It is well for those
who are in possession" (Beati possidentes). It does not consist in the
fact that, because the possessor has the presumption of being a
rightful man, it is unnecessary for him to bring forward proof that he
possesses a certain thing rightfully, for this position applies only
to a case of disputed right. But it is because it accords with the
postulate of the practical reason, that everyone is invested with
the faculty of having as his own any external object upon which he has
exerted his will; and, consequently, all actual possession is a
state whose rightfulness is established upon that postulate by an
anterior act of will. And such an act, if there be no prior possession
of the same object by another opposed to it, does, therefore,
provisionally justify and entitle me, according to the law of external
freedom, to restrain anyone who refuses to enter with me into a
state of public legal freedom from all pretension to the use of such
an object.
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