y into a kind of delirium he launches forth into high-flown
phrases which have no meaning whatever. He takes the most remote and
empty conceptions, and strings them together artificially, instead of
fixing his eyes on the facts, and looking at things and relations as
they really are. It is these things and relations which supply the
ideas of Right and Freedom, and give them the only true meaning that
they possess.

The man who starts from the preconceived opinion that the conception
of Right must be a positive one, and then attempts to define it, will
fail; for he is trying to grasp a shadow, to pursue a spectre, to
search for what does not exist. The conception of Right is a negative
one, like the conception of Freedom; its content is mere negation.
It is the conception of Wrong which is positive; Wrong has the same
significance as _injury_--_laesio_--in the widest sense of the term.
An injury may be done either to a man's person or to his property or
to his honour; and accordingly a man's rights are easy to define:
every one has a right to do anything that injures no one else.

To have a right to do or claim a thing means nothing more than to be
able to do or take or vise it without thereby injuring any one else.
_Simplex sigillum veri_. This definition shows how senseless many
questions are; for instance, the question whether we have the right to
take our own life, As far as concerns the personal claims which others
may possibly have upon us, they are subject to the condition that we
are alive, and fall to the ground when we die. To demand of a man, who
does not care to live any longer for himself, that he should live
on as a mere machine for the advantage of others is an extravagant
pretension.

Although men's powers differ, their rights are alike. Their rights do
not rest upon their powers, because Right is of a moral complexion;
they rest on the fact that the same will to live shows itself in
every man at the same stage of its manifestation. This, however, only
applies to that original and abstract Right, which a man possesses as
a man. The property, and also the honour, which a man acquires for
himself by the exercise of his powers, depend on the measure and kind
of power which he possesses, and so lend his Right a wider sphere of
application. Here, then, equality comes to an end. The man who is
better equipped, or more active, increases by adding to his gains, not
his Right, but the number of the things to wh