65. I may relinquish property, since it is mine only by virtue of my having put my will into it. I may let a thing go unowned by me or pass it over to the will and possession of another; but this is possible only so far as the object is in its nature something external.
Addition.— Prescription is relinquishment without direct declaration of will. True relinquishment is a declaration that I will no longer regard the object as mine. The process in all its phases may be taken to be a true taking of possession. First there is the direct prehension; then by use property is thoroughly acquired; and the third step is the unity of both these elements, possession through relinquishment.
66. Some goods, or rather substantive phases of life are inalienable, and the right to them does not perish through lapse of time. These comprise my inner personality and the universal essence of my consciousness of myself, and are personality in general, freedom of will in the broadest sense, social life and religion.
Note.— What the spirit is in conception, or implicitly, it should also be in actuality; it should be a person, that is to say, be able to possess property, have sociality and religion. This idea is itself the conception of spirit. As causa sui, or free cause, it is that, cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens (Spinoza, “Eth.” Def. 1). In this very conception, namely, that spirit shall be what it is only through itself and by the infinite return into itself out of its natural and direct reality, lies the possibility of opposition between what it is only implicitly (§57), and what it is only explicitly. In the will this opposition is the possibility of evil, but in general it is the possibility of the alienation of personality and substantive being; and this alienation may occur either unconsciously or intentionally. —Examples of the disposal of personality are slavery, vassalage, inability to own property or lack of complete control over it. Relinquishment of reason, sociality, morality or religion occurs in superstition; it occurs also if I delegate to others the authority to prescribe for me what kind of acts I shall commit, as when one sells himself for robbery, murder, or the possibility of any other crime; it occurs when I permit others to determine what for me shall be duty or religious truth.
The right to nothing that is inalienable can be forfeited through lapse of time. The act by which I take possession of my personality and real being, and establish myself as having rights, responsibilities, and moral and religious obligations, deprives these attributes of that externality, which alone gives them the capacity of being possessed by another. Along with the departure of this externality goes the reference to time or to any previous consent or complaisance. This return of myself into myself, being the process by which I establish myself as idea or complete legal and moral person, does away with the old relation. It removes the violence which I and others had done to my own conception and reason, the wrong of having treated the infinite existence of self-consciousness as something merely extraneous, and of having suffered others to do the same. This return into myself reveals the contradiction implied in my having given into the keeping of others my right, morality or religion. I gave them what I did not myself possess, what, so soon as I do possess it, exists in essence only as mine, and not as something external.
Addition.— It lies in the nature of the matter that the slave has an absolute right to make himself free, or that, when anyone has hired out his morality for robbery and murder, the transaction is absolutely void. Anyone possesses the competency to annul such an agreement. It is the same with the letting of religiosity by a priest, who is my confessor. The inner religious condition every one must adjust by himself. A religiosity, part of which is handed over to some one else is not genuine, for the spirit is only one, and must dwell within me. To me it must belong to unite the act of worship with religious aspiration.
67. The use of single products of my particular physical endowments or mental capacities I may hand over to others for a limited time, since, when a time limit is recognized, these products may be said to have an external relation to my genuine and total being. If I were to dispose of my whole time, made concrete in work, and all my activity, I would be giving up the essence of my productions. My whole activity and reality, in short, my personality, would be the property of another.
Note.— This is the same relation as that (§61) between the substance of an object and its use. As it is only by limiting use that we can distinguish it from the object, so the use of my powers is to be distinguished from these powers themselves, only in so far as it has a quantitative limit. The total number of manifestations of a faculty is the faculty; the accidents are the substance; the particulars, the universal.
Addition.— The distinction, here analyzed, is that between a slave and a servant or day-labourer in our own time. The Athenian slave had possibly lighter occupation and higher kind of mental work than is the rule with our workmen. But he was a slave notwithstanding, since the whole circle of his activity was controlled by his master.
68. What is peculiar to a mental product can be externalized and directly converted into an object, which it is possible for others to produce. When another person has acquired the object, he may make the thought or, it may be, the mechanical genius in it, his own; a possibility which in the case of literary works constitutes the reason and special value of acquisition. But, over and above this, the new owner comes at the same time into possession of the general power to express himself in the same way, and so of making any number of objects of the same kind.
Note.— In works of art the form, which images the thought in an external material, is so conspicuously the possession of the artist, that an imitation of it is really a product of the imitator ’s mental and mechanical skill. But in the case of literature or an invention of some technical contrivance, the form in which it is externalized is of a mechanical sort. In a book the thought is presented in a row of particular abstract signs; in an invention the thought has a wholly mechanical content. The way to reproduce such things, as mere things, is a matter of ordinary skilled labour. Between the two extremes, on the one side a work of art, and on the other a product of manual labour, there are all stages of production, some of which incline to one of the extremes, some to the other.
69. Since the purchaser of such a product of mental skill possesses the full use and value of his single copy, he is complete and free owner of that one copy, although the author of the work or the inventor of the apparatus remains owner of the general method of multiplying such products. The author or inventor has not disposed directly of the general method, but may reserve it for his private utterance.
Note.— The justification of the right of the author or inventor cannot be sought in his arbitrarily making it a condition, when he disposes of a copy, that the possibility of bringing out other copies shall not belong to the purchaser, but shall remain in his own hands. The first question is whether the separation of the object from the power to reproduce, which goes with the object, is allowable in thought, and does not destroy full and free possession (§62). Does it depend upon the arbitrary choice of the first producer to reserve to himself the power to reproduce or dispose of the product of his mind? Or, on the other hand, may he count it of no value, and give it freely with each separate copy? Now there is this peculiarity about this power, that through it the object becomes not merely a possession, but a means of wealth (see §170, and fol.). This new feature is a special kind of external use, and is different and separate from the use to which the object was directly appointed. It is not, as it is called, an accessio naturalis as are foetura. Hence as the distinction occurs in the sphere of external use, which is naturally capable of being divided, the reservation of one part, while another is being disposed of, is not the retention of an ownership without utile.
The primary and most important claim of trade and commerce is to give them surety against highway robbery. In the same way the primary though merely negative demand of the sciences and arts is to insure the workers in these fields against larceny, and give their property protection. But in the case of a mental product the intention is that others should comprehend it, and make its imagination, memory, and thought their own. Learning is not merely the treasuring up of words in the memory; it is through thinking that the thoughts of others are seized, and this after-thinking is real learning. Now that which is learned becomes in turn something which can be disposed of; and the external expression of this material may easily assume a form different from the form into which the original thinker threw his work. Thus those who have worked over the material a second time may regard as their own possession whatever money they may be able to extract from their work, and may contend that they have a right to reproduce it. In the transmission of the sciences in general, and especially in teaching positive science, church doctrine, or jurisprudence, are found the adoption and repetition of thoughts which are already established and expressed. This is largely the case with writings composed for the same purpose. It is not possible to state accurately, and establish explicitly by law and right, just how far the new form, which accrues through repeated expression, should transmute the scientific treasure or the thoughts of others, who are still in external possession, into a special mental possession of the person who re-constructs them; how far, in other words, a repetition of an author ’s work should be called a plagiarism. Hence plagiarism must be a question of honour, and should be refrained from on that score.
Laws against reprinting protect the property of author and publisher in a very definite but, indeed, limited measure. The ease with which one can intentionally alter the form or insert slight modifications into a large work on science or a comprehensive theory which is the work of another, and further, the great difficulty, when discoursing on what one has received, of abiding by the letter of the author, introduce, in addition to the special purposes requiring such a repetition, an endless variety of changes, which stamp upon the foreign article the more or less superficial impression of something which is one’s own. The hundreds of compendiums, abridgments, compilations, arithmetics, geometries, religious tracts, every venture of a critical journal, an annual, or a cyclopaedia, keep on repeating under the same or an altered title, although each may be maintained to be something new and unique. Yet the profit which the work promised the author or inventor in the first place may be wiped out, or the purpose of both author and imitator may be defeated, or one may be ruined.
It is noteworthy that the term plagiarism, or scholar ’s larceny is no longer heard. It may be that the principle of honour has dislodged it, or that the feeling of honour has vanished or ceased to be directed against plagiarism, or that a small compilation or slight change of form is ranked as an original and independent production, and so highly esteemed as to banish all thought of plagiarism.
70. Since personality is something directly present, the comprehensive totality of one’s outer activity, the life, is not external to it. Thus the disposal or sacrifice of life is not the manifestation of one’s personality so much as the very opposite. Hence I have no right to relinquish my life. Only a moral and social ideal, which submerges the direct, simple and separate personality, and constitutes its real power, has a right to life. Life, as such, being direct and unreflected, and death the direct negation of it, death must come from without as a result of natural causes, or must be received in the service of the idea from a foreign hand.
Addition.— The particular person is really a subordinate, who must devote his life to the service of the ethical fabric; when the state demands his life, he must yield it up. But should the man take his own life? Suicide may at first glance be looked upon as bravery, although it be the poor bravery of tailors and maid-servants. Or it may be regarded as a misfortune, caused by a broken heart. But the point is, Have I any right to kill myself? The answer is that I, as this individual am not lord over my life, since the comprehensive totality of one’s activity, the life, falls within the direct and present personality. To speak of the right of a person over his life is a contradiction, since it implies a right of a person over himself. But no one can stand above and execute himself. When Hercules burnt himself, and Brutus fell upon his sword, this action against their personality was doubtless of an heroic type; but yet the simple right to commit suicide must be denied even to heroes.
Transition from Property to Contract.
71. Outward and visible existence, as definite, is essentially existence for another thing (see note to §48). Thus property, as a visible external thing, is determined by its relations to other external things, these relations being both necessary and accidental. But property is also a manifestation of will, and the other, for which it exists, is the will of another person. This reference of will to will is the true and peculiar ground on which freedom is realized. The means by which I hold property, not by virtue of the relation of an object to my subjective will, but by virtue of another will, and hence share in a common will, is contract.
Note.— It is just as much a necesity of reason that men make contracts, exchange, and trade, as that they should have property (§45, note). In their consciousness it is some want, benevolence, or advantage, which occasions the contract, but really it is reason, or the idea as it is embodied in the realized will of a free person. It is taken for granted that contracting parties recognize one another as persons and owners. Recognition is contained and presupposed in the fact that contract is a relation of the objective spirit (§35, note to §57).
Addition.— In contract I hold property through a common will. It is the interest of reason that the subjective will become universal, and exalt itself to this level of realization. In contract the particular will remains, although it is now in conjunction with another will. The universal will assumes here no higher form than co-operation.