Property Rights Are a Spook

A dog sees the bone in another's power, -- and stands off only if it feels itself too weak. But man respects the other's right to his bone. The latter action, therefore, ranks as human, the former as brutal or "egoistic."

And as here, so in general, it is called "human" when one sees in everything something spiritual (here right), i.e. makes everything a ghost and takes his attitude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as individual, but as a generality.

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