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 which it extends.

In my chief work[1] I have proved that the State in its essence is merely an institution existing for the purpose of protecting its members against outward attack or inward dissension.  It follows from this that the ultimate ground on which the State is necessary is the acknowledged lack of Right in the human race.  If Right were there, no one would think of a State; for no one would have any fear that his rights would be impaired; and a mere union against the attacks of wild beasts or the elements would have very little analogy with what we mean by a State.  From this point of view it is easy to see how dull and stupid are the philosophasters who in pompous phrases represent that the State is the supreme end and flower of human existence.  Such a view is the apotheosis of Philistinism.

[Footnote 1:  1 Bk. ii., ch. xlvii.]