For what are our faculties, but the extension of our
personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his
liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine
together, to extend, to organize a common force, to provide regularly
for this defence.
Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its
lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally
have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated
forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual
cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of
another individual--for the same reason, the common force cannot
lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of
individuals or of classes.
For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in
contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has
been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal
rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual
force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force,
which is only the organized union of isolated forces?
Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this:--The law is the
organization of the natural right of lawful defence; it is the
substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of
acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what
they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties,
and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over
all.
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