If, by word or deed, I declare my will that some external thing shall be mine, I make a declaration that every other person is obliged to abstain from the use of this object of my exercise of will; and this imposes an obligation which no one would be under, without such a juridical act on my part.But the assumption of this act at the same time involves the admission that I am obliged reciprocally to observe a similar abstention towards every other in respect of what is externally theirs; for the obligation in question arises from a universal rule regulating the external juridical relations.Hence I am not obliged to let alone what another person declares to be externally his, unless every other person likewise secures me by a guarantee that he will act in relation to what is mine, upon the same principle.This guarantee of reciprocal and mutual abstention from what belongs to others does not require a special juridical act for its establishment, but is already involved in the conception of an external obligation of right, on account of the universality and consequently the reciprocity of the obligatoriness arising from a universal Rule.Now a single will, in relation to an external and consequently contingent possession, cannot serve as a compulsory law for all, because that would be to do violence to the freedom which is in accordance with universal laws.Therefore it is only a will that binds every one, and as such a common, collective, and authoritative will, that can furnish a guarantee of security to all.But the state of men under a universal, external, and public legislation, conjoined with authority and power, is called the civil state.There can therefore be an external mine and thine only in the civil state of society.
Consequence.- It follows, as a corollary, that, if it is juridically possible to have an external object as one's own, the individual subject of possession must be allowed to compel or constrain every person with whom a dispute as to the mine or thine of such a possession may arise, to enter along with himself into the relations of a civil constitution.
9.There May, However, Be an External Mine and Thine Found as a Fact in the State of Nature, but it is only Provisory.
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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.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.For such a procedure is requisite, in conformity with the postulate of reason, in order to subject to my proper use a thing which would otherwise be practically annihilated, as regards all proper use of it.
