ption.

When Kant's theory is examined it will be found to contain both the
idea of occupation and the idea of compact. Occupation has become a
legal transaction involving a unilateral pact not to disturb others in
respect of their occupation of other things. But the pact does not
derive its efficacy from the inherent moral force of a promise as
such or the nature of man as a moral creature which holds him to
promises. Its efficacy is not found in qualities of promises or of
men, but in a principle of reconciling wills by a universal law, since
that principle requires one who declares his will as to object A to
respect the declaration of his neighbor's will as to object B. On the
other hand, the idea of creation is significantly absent. Writing at
the end of the eighteenth century, in view of the ideas of Rousseau,
who held that the man who first laid out a plot of ground and said,
"This is mine," should have been lynched, and of the interferings with
vested rights in Revolutionary France, Kant was not thinking how those
who had not might claim a greater share in what they produced but how
those who had might claim to hold what they had.

Hegel develops the metaphysical theory further by getting rid of the
idea of occupation and treating property as a realization of the idea
of liberty. Property, he says, "makes objective my personal,
individual will." In order to reach the complete liberty involved in
the idea of liberty, one must give his liberty an external sphere.
Hence a person has a right to direct his will upon an external object
and an object on which it is so directed becomes his. It is not an end
in itself; it gets its whole rational significance from his will. Thus
when one appropriates a thing, fundamentally he manifests the majesty
of his will by demonstrating that external objects that have no wills
are not self-sufficient and are not ends in themselves. It follows
that the demand for equality in the division of the soil and in other
forms of wealth is superficial. For, he argues, differences of wealth
are due to accidents of external nature that give to what A has
impressed with his will greater value than to what B has impressed
with his, and to the infinite diversity of individual mind and
character that leads A to attach his will to this and B to attach his
will to that. Men are equal as persons. With respect to the principle
of possession they stand alike. Everyone must have property of some
sort in