Lectures on the Philosophy of Law

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE IV. Gentlemen, ?The last subject of consideration with us was the alienation of property through long omission of the manifestation of will in it. There the omission was indirect, and the step from indirect to direct omission constitutes the transition from the subject of the use of property to...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE IV. Gentlemen, ?The last subject of consideration with us was the alienation of property through long omission of the manifestation of will in it. There the omission was indirect, and the step from indirect to direct omission constitutes the transition from the subject of the use of property to that of its alienation proper. A thing is mine when it is willed mine, and not mine, consequently, when it is willed not mine; or, from that into which I have set my will, I can also withdraw it again. This is alienation which may be an act direct, explicit, and declared, as well as one indirect, implicit, and undeclared. What is alienable, however, must be by very nature external; whereas, what is by very nature internal, is also by the very terms inalienable. I cannot outer what is wholly and solely inner. Now, such is my personality as personality; such my freewill, my moral sense, my religious conviction. These I cannot commit to the disposal of another; for they are my very inmost being, my very principle of existence, my very self; and the nature of one's absolute self is freewill, and that is freedom, liberty. I can neither be a slave then, nor have a slave. All compulsion is unlawful, but that of law itself, which, properly considered, is no compulsion; for it is the restoration of right, of freewill, not only to him who has been compelled, but to him who has been the compeller. Or, to put it otherwise, no man can be compelled, but to undo his compulsion, which evidently is the restoration of his own right. He who gives into the possession of another his capability of rights, his moral and religious principles, gives away what he does not possess. Let him once possess them, let him once take his own freewill into possession, and such alienation is impossible. Eetrocession ..