THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 99 



or nullify its opposition to itself, but rather fortified its 

 opposite against itself by putting itself into it. But 

 instead of contradicting, it illustrates our main principle, 

 exhibiting the same phenomena as we have already 

 observed in knowledge and in morals. If, in knowing, 

 reason does away with the dualism of spirit and nature, 

 it at the same time establishes the order of nature as a 

 reality (though no longer an unspiritual reality), which 

 gives the rule to reason and stands as the ideal of the 

 whole process of knowing. If, in action, spirit negates 

 the rights of the passions to war against reason, it at the 

 same time gives them new rights and a new freedom and 

 range of utterance as the instruments of reason, and even 

 as its elements and self-expression. 



In a similar way, as private property is really property 

 only when it is an instrument which the individual can 

 use, or when it is means of his self-realisation through 

 action, it implies, and indeed is, a social fact. Property 

 is a sphere of activities, a "station and its duties," a 

 system of obligations set up by the individual against 

 himself. On the other hand, as private property is more 

 than individual appropriation, as it is rightful ownership, 

 it means the recognition by society of a law which imposes 

 restraints on its own caprice, and a system of obligations 

 which it must observe, and observe the more scrupulously, 

 regard as the more binding, because they are expressions 

 of its own will. Private property, in a word, is an insti- 

 tution wherein the individual finds a rule of action in 

 society and society a rule of action in the individual. 



With the progress of civilisation the rights which the 

 individual on the one side or the State on the other 

 establishes within its "other" become at once more wide 



