The conflict over the "right of property" wavers in vehement commotion. The Communists affirm[133] that "the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it, and its products to those who bring them out." I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him, does not let himself be deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the earth, but the right to it too, belongs to him. This is _egoistic right_: _i. e._, it is right for _me_, therefore it is right.
Aside from this, right does have "a wax nose." The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my _right_, but _myself_.
As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give. _i. e._ "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected, the children had nevertheless "by nature" the right to exist; only the Spartans refused _recognition_ to this right. But then they simply had no right to this recognition,--no more than they had to recognition of their life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown.
People talk so much about _birthright_, and complain:
There is--alas!--no mention of the rights That were born with us.[134]
What sort of right, then, is there that was born with me? The right to receive an entailed estate, to inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble education; or, again, because poor parents begot me, to--get free schooling, be clothed out of contributions of alms, and at last earn my bread and my herring in the coal-mines or at the loom? Are these not birthrights, rights that have come down to me from my parents through _birth_? You think--no; you think these are only rights improperly so called, it is just these rights that you aim to abolish through the _real birthright_. To give a basis for this you go back to the simplest thing and affirm that every one is by birth _equal_ to another,--to wit, a _man_. I will grant you that every one is born as man, hence the new-born are therein _equal_ to each other. Why are they? Only because they do not yet show and exert themselves as anything but bare--_children of men_, naked little human beings. But thereby they are at once different from those who have already made something out of themselves, who thus are no longer bare "children of men," but--children of their own creation. The latter possess more than bare birthrights: they have _earned_ rights. What an antithesis, what a field of combat! The old combat of the birthrights of man and well-earned rights. Go right on appealing to your birthrights; people will not fail to oppose to you the well-earned. Both stand on the "ground of right"; for each of the two has a "right" against the other, the one the birthright or natural right, the other the earned or "well-earned" right.