If you remain on the ground of right, you remain in--_Rechthaberei_.[135] The other cannot give you your right; he cannot "mete out right" to you. He who has might has--right; if you have not the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain? Just look at the mighty and their doings! We are talking here only of China and Japan, of course. Just try it once, you Chinese and Japanese, to make them out in the wrong, and learn by experience how they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse with this the "well-meaning counsels" which--in China and Japan--are permitted, because they do not hinder the mighty one, but possibly _help him on_.) For him who should want to make them out in the wrong there would stand open only one way thereto, that of might. If he deprives them of their _might_, then he has _really_ made them out in the wrong, deprived them of their right; in any other case he can do nothing but clench his little fist in his pocket, or fall a victim as an obtrusive fool.
In short, if you Chinese and Japanese did not ask after right, and in particular if you did not ask after the rights "that were born with you," then you would not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights either.
You start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside them the _ghost of right_, which, as in the Homeric combats, seems to fight as a goddess at their side, helping them. What do you do? Do you throw the spear? No, you creep around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost's favor. Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my opponent wills? "No!" Now then, there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him all the same!
The "commonwealth of right," as the "_Vossische Zeitung_" among others stands for it, asks that office-holders be removable only by the _judge_, not by the _administration_. Vain illusion! If it were settled by law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the witnesses, etc. In short, the lawgiver would only have to state precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, however laughable they might be (_e. g._ he who laughs in his superiors' faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be removed. These things the lawgiver might take it into his head to prescribe, _e. g._, for a court of honor); then the judge would solely have to investigate whether the accused had "become guilty" of those "offences," and, on presentation of the proof, pronounce sentence of removal against him "in the name of the law."