But if they are opposed to entering into the civil
state, as long as this opposition lasts it carries all the effect of a
guaranteed juridical acquisition with it, because the advance from the
state of nature to the civil state is founded upon a duty.
17. Deduction of the Conception of the Original
Primary Acquisition.
We have found the title of acquisition in a universal original
community of the soil, under the conditions of an external acquisition
in space; and the mode of acquisition is contained in the empirical
fact of taking possession (apprehensio), conjoined with the will to
have an external object as one's own. It is further necessary to
unfold, from the principles of the pure juridically practical reason
involved in the conception, the juridical acquisition proper of an
object- that is, the external mine and thine that follows from the two
previous conditions, as rational possession (possessio noumenon).
The juridical conception of the external mine and thine, so far as
it involves the category of substance, cannot by "that which is
external to me" mean merely "in a place other than that in which I
am"; for it is a rational conception. As under the conceptions of
the reason only intellectual conceptions can be embraced, the
expression in question can only signify "something that is different
and distinct from me" according to the idea of a non-empirical
possession through, as it were, a continuous activity in taking
possession of an external object; and it involves only the notion of
having something in my power, which indicates the connection of an
object with myself, as a subjective condition of the possibility of
making use of it.
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