The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

virtue of his strength: and where the right (though nor the power) of resisting is equal to the right of commanding, the right of commanding or dominion is nothing.

Since strength and power are most apt to pretend a title to dominion,357 it may be added further that power and right, or a power of doing anything and right to do it, are quite different ideas, and therefore they may be separated; nor does one infer the other. Lastly, if power, quà power, gives a right to dominion, it gives a right to everything that is obnoxious to it; and then nothing can be done that is wrong. (For nobody can do anything which he has not the power to do.) But this is not only contrary to what has been proved in section I, but to assert it would be to advance a plain absurdity, or contradiction rather. For then to oppose the man who has this power, as far as one can, or (which is the same) as far as one has the power to do it, would not be wrong: and yet so it must be, if he has a right to dominion, or to be not opposed. Moreover, that a man should have a right to anything, merely because he has the power to take it, is a doctrine indeed which may serve a few tyrants, or some banditti and rogues, but directly opposite to the peace and general good of mankind; and therefore to be exploded, by proposition III. It is also what the powerful themselves could not allow, if they would but imagine themselves to be in the state of the weak and more defenceless; and therefore unreasonable, by proposition IV.358

VI. No man can have a right to begin to interrupt the happiness of another. Because, in the first place, this supposes a dominion over him, and the most absolute too that can be. In the next, for B to begin to disturb the peace and happiness of C is what B would think unreasonable, if he was in C’s case. In the last, since it is supposed that C has never invaded the happiness of B, nor taken anything from him, nor at all meddled with him, but the whole transaction begins originally from B (for all this is couched in the word “begin”), C can have nothing that is B’s, and therefore nothing to which C has not at least as good a title as B has, or, in other words, nothing which C has not as much right to keep as B to claim. These two rights being then at least equal, and counterpoising each other, no alteration in the present state of things can follow from any superiority of right in B; and therefore, it must of right remain as it is, and what C has must, for any right that B has to oppose this settlement, remain with C in his undisturbed possession. But the argument is still stronger on the side of C, because he seems to have such a property in his own happiness, as is mentioned in proposition II⁠—such a one as no other can have.359

VII. Though no man can have a right to begin to interrupt another man’s happiness, or to hurt him; yet every man has a right to defend himself and his against violence, to recover what is taken by force from him, and even to make reprisals, by all the means that truth and prudence permit.360 We have seen already that there are some things which a man may truly call his; and let us for the present only suppose that there may be more. This premised, I proceed to make good the proposition.

To deny a man the privilege mentioned in it, is to assert, contrary to truth, either that he has not the faculties and powers which he has, or that the Author of nature has given them to him in vain. For to what end has he them, if he may not use them? And how may he use them, if not for his own preservation when he is attacked, and like to be abused or perhaps destroyed?

All animals have a principle of self-preservation, which exerts itself many times with an uncontrollable impetuosity. Nature is uniform in this, and everywhere constant to itself. Even inanimate bodies, when they are acted upon, react. And one may be sure that no position can have any foundation in nature, or be consistent with it and truth (those inseparable companions), which turns upon nature itself, and tends to its destruction.

Great part of the general happiness of mankind depends upon those means by which the innocent may be saved from their cruel invaders⁠—among which, the opportunities they have of defending themselves may be reckoned the chief. Therefore, to debar men of the use of these opportunities, and the right of defending themselves against injurious treatment and violence, must be inconsistent with the laws of nature by proposition III.

If a man has no right to defend himself and what is his, he can have no right to anything (the contrary to which has been already in part, and will by and by be more amply, proved), since that cannot be his right which he may not maintain to be his right.

If a man has no right to defend himself against insults, etc., it must be because the aggressor has a right to assail the other and usurp what is his. But this pretension has been prevented in the foregoing proposition. And, more than that, it includes a great absurdity: to commence an injury, or to begin the violence, being in nature more than only to repel it. He who begins is the true cause of all that follows; and whatever falls upon him, from the opposition made by the defending party,