It is therefore
reasonable that any one should constrain another by force, to pass
from such a nonjuridical state of life and enter within the
jurisdiction of a civil state of society. For, although on the basis
of the ideas of right held by individuals as such, external things may
be acquired by occupancy or contract, yet such acquisition is only
provisory so long as it has not yet obtained the sanction of a
public law. Till this sanction is reached, the condition of possession
is not determined by any public distributive justice, nor is it
secured by any power exercising public right.
If men were not disposed to recognize any acquisition at all as
rightful- even in a provisional way- prior to entering into the
civil state, this state of society would itself be impossible. For the
laws regarding the mine and thine in the state of nature, contain
formally the very same thing as they prescribe in the civil state,
when it is viewed merely according to rational conceptions: only
that in the forms of the civil state the conditions are laid down
under which the formal prescriptions of the state of nature attain
realization conformable to distributive justice. Were there, then, not
even provisionally, an external meum and tuum in the state of
nature, neither would there be any juridical duties in relation to
them; and, consequently, there would be no obligation to pass out of
that state into another.
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