constituted against a person, who is in common possession of things
with all others in the civil state of society.

        12. The First Acquisition of a Thing can only

                  be that of the Soil.

  By the soil is understood all habitable Land. In relation to
everything that is moveable upon it, it is to be regarded as a
substance, and the mode of the existence of the moveables is viewed as
an inherence in it. And just as, in the theoretical acceptance,
accidents cannot exist apart from their substances, so, in the
practical relation, moveables upon the soil cannot be regarded as
belonging to any one unless he is supposed to have been previously
in juridical possession of the soil, so that it is thus considered
to be his.

  For, let it be supposed that the soil belongs to no one. Then I
would be entitled to remove every moveable thing found upon it from
its place, even to total loss of it, in order to occupy that place,
without infringing thereby on the freedom of any other; there being,
by the hypothesis, no possessor of it at all. But everything that
can be destroyed, such as a tree, a house, and such like- as regards
its matter at least- is moveable; and if we call a thing which
cannot be moved without destruction of its form an immoveable, the
mine and thine in it is not understood as applying to its substance,
but to that which is adherent to it and which does not essentially
constitute the thing itself.

     13. Every Part of the Soil may be Originally Acquired; and

        the Principle of the Possibility of such Acquisition

         is the Original Community of the Soil Generally.

  The first clause of this proposition is founded upon the postulate
of the practical reason (SS 2); the second is established by the
following proof.

  All men are originally and before any juridical act of will in
rightful possession of the soil; that is, they have a right to be
wherever nature or chance has placed them without their will.
Possession (possessio), which is to be distinguished from
residential settlement (sedes) as a voluntary, acquired, and permanent
possession, becomes common possession, on account of the connection
with each other of all the places on the surface of the earth as a
globe. For, had the surface of the earth been an infinite plain, men
could have been so dispersed upon it that they might not have come
into any necessary communion with each other, and a state of social
community would not have been a necessary consequence of their
existence upon the earth. Now that possession proper to all men upon
the earth, which is prior to all their particular juridical acts,
constitutes an original possession in common (communio possessionis
originaria). The conception of such an original, common possession
of things is not derived from experience, nor is it dependent on
conditions of time, as is the case with the imaginary and
indemonstrable fiction of a primaeval community of possession in
actual history. Hence it is a practical conception of reason,
involving in itself the only principle according to which men may
use the place they happen to occupy on the surface of the earth, in
accordance with laws of right.

           14. The Juridical Act of this Original

                   Acquisition is Occupancy.

  The act of taking possession (apprehensio), being at its beginning
the physical appropriation of a corporeal thing in space (possessionis
physicae), can accord with the law of the external freedom of all,
under no other condition than that of its priority in respect of time.
In this relation it must have the characteristic of a first act in the
way of taking possession, as a free exercise of will. The activity
of will, however, as determining that the thing- in this case a
definite separate place on the surface of the earth- shall be mine,
being an act of appropriation, cannot be otherwise in the case of
original acquisition than individual or unilateral (voluntas
unilateralis s. propria). Now, occupancy is the acquisition of an
external object by an individual act of will. The original acquisition
of such an object as a limited portion of the soil can therefore
only be accomplished by an act of occupation.

  The possibility of this mode of acquisition cannot be intuitively
apprehended by pure reason in any way, nor established by its
principles, but is an immediate consequence from the postulate of
the practical reason. The will as practical reason, however, cannot
justify external acquisition otherwise than only in so far as it is
itself included in an absolutely authoritative will, with which it
is united by implication; or, in other words, only in so far as it
is contained within a union of the wills of all who come into
practical relation with each other. For an individual, unilateral
will- and the same applies to a dual or other particular will-
cannot impose on all an obligation which is contingent in itself. This
requires an omnilateral or universal will, which is not contingent,
but a priori, and which is therefore necessarily united and
legislative. Only in accordance with such a principle can there be
agreement of the active free-will of each individual with the
freedom of all, and consequently rights in general, or even the
possibility of an external mine and thine.

     15. It is Only within a Civil Constitution that Anything can