The Law - Paperback

by Patrick James Stirling (Translator), Frederic Bastiat (Author)

We hold from God the gift which, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life - physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot support itself. He who has bestowed it, has entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting it. To that end, He has provided us with a collection of wonderful faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements, that the phenomena of assimilation and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle which has been assigned to it, are realized. Existence, faculties, assimilation - in other words, personality, liberty, property - this is man. It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all demagogue subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation. It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.