will believe or trust in it or not.*  But all these rights or titles
are already included in the principle of innate freedom, and are not
really distinguished from it, even as dividing members under a
higher species of right.

  *It is customary to designate every untruth that is spoken
intentionally as such, although it may be in a frivolous manner a lie,
or falsehood (mendacium), because it may do harm, at least in so far
as any one who repeats it in good faith may be made a laughing-stock
of to others on account of his easy credulity. But in the juridical
sense, only that untruth is called a lie which immediately infringes
the right of another, such as a false allegation of a contract
having been concluded, when the allegation is put forward in order
to deprive some one of what is his (falsiloquim dolosum). This
distinction of conceptions so closely allied is not without
foundation; because on the occasion of a simple statement of one's
thoughts, it is always free for another to take them as he may; and
yet the resulting repute, that such a one is a man whose word cannot
be trusted, comes so close to the opprobrium of directly calling him a
liar, that the boundary-line separating what, in such a case,
belongs to jurisprudence, and what is special to ethics, can hardly be
otherwise drawn.

  The reason why such a division into separate rights has been
introduced into the system of natural right, viewed as including all
that is innate, was not without a purpose. Its object was to enable
proof to be more readily put forward in case of any controversy
arising about an acquired right, and questions emerging either with
reference to a fact that might be in doubt, or, if that were
established, in reference to a right under dispute. For the party
repudiating an obligation, and on whom the burden of proof (onus
probandi) might be incumbent, could thus methodically refer to his
innate right of freedom as specified under various relations in
detail, and could therefore found upon them equally as different
titles of right.

  In the relation of innate right, and consequently of the internal
mine and thine, there is therefore not rights, but only one right.
And, accordingly, this highest division of rights into innate and
acquired, which evidently consists of two members extremely unequal in
their contents is properly placed in the introduction; and the
subdivisions of the science of right may be referred in detail to
the external mine and thine.

         C. Methodical Division of the Science of Right.

  The highest division of the system of natural right should not be-
as it is frequently put- into "natural right" and "social right,"
but into natural right and civil right. The first constitutes
private right; the second, public right. For it is not the "social
state" but the "civil state" that is opposed to the "state of nature";
for in the "state of nature" there may well be society of some kind,
but there is no "civil" society, as an institution securing the mine
and thine by public laws. It is thus that right, viewed under
reference to the state of nature, is specially called private right.
The whole of the principles of right will therefore fall to be
expounded under the two subdivisions of private right and public
right.
CH1

                  FIRST PART. PRIVATE RIGHT.

  The System of those Laws Which Require No External Promulgation.

  CHAPTER I. Of the Mode of Having Anything External as One's Own.

              1. The Meaning of "Mine" in Right

                       (Meum Juris).

  Anything is "Mine" by right, or is rightfully mine, when I am so
connected with it, that if any other person should make use of it
without my consent, he would do me a lesion or injury. The
subjective condition of the use of anything is possession of it.

  An external thing, however as such could only be mine, if I may
assume it to be possible that I can be wronged by the use which
another might make of it when it is not actually in my possession.
Hence it would be a contradiction to have anything external as one's
own, were not the conception of possession capable of two different
meanings, as sensible possession that is perceivable by the senses,
and rational possession that is perceivable only by the intellect.
By the former is to be understood a physical possession, and by the
latter, a purely juridical possession of the same object.

  The description of an object as "external to me" may signify
either that it is merely "different and distinct from me as a
subject," or that it is also "a thing placed outside of me, and to
be found elsewhere in space or time." Taken in the first sense, the
term possession signifies rational possession; and, in the second
sense, it must mean empirical possession. A rational or intelligible
possession, if such be possible, is possession viewed apart from
physical holding or detention (detentio).

         2. Juridical Postulate of the Practical Reason.

  It is possible to have any external object of my will as mine. In
other words, a maxim to this effect- were it to become law- that any
object on which the will can be exerted must remain objectively in
itself without an owner, as res nullius, is contrary to the