288 ON THE NOTIONS OF RIGHT AND JUSTICE 



Hence come the precepts that we should do injury to no 

 one, that we should give each his own, that we should 

 live virtuously (or rather piously), the universal and 

 commonly accepted precepts of Eight [jus] 24 ; as I 

 suggested, when a youth, in my little book De Methodo 

 Juris 25 . The precept of bare Eight or Right in the narrow 

 sense [jus strictum] 26 is that no one is to be injured, lest if 

 it be within the state, the person should have ground for 

 an action at law, or if it be without the state, he should 

 have the right to make war 27 . From this there comes 

 the justice which the philosophers call commutative and 

 the right which Grotius calls right proper [facultas] 28 . 



24 The precepts are given by Ulpian. See Justiniani Institutiones, 

 Lib. i. Tit. i. 3 (Moyle's ed., vol. i. p. 100). In his De tribus juris 

 naturae et gentium gradibus (Mollat, p. 14), Leibniz says that the three 

 precepts flow from 'the supreme rule of Right,' which is ' to direct 

 all things to the greater general good.' 



25 Methodus now discendae docendaeque Jurisprudentiae (i667\ 74-76 

 (Dutens, iv. 213). This was the work through which Leibniz 

 obtained an introduction to the Elector of Mainz. See Introduction, 

 Part i. p. 4. 



26 Grotius distinguishes between jus strictum and jus laxius, the 

 latter being moral right. De jure belli etpacis, bk. i. ch. i, 9, i and 2. 

 Cf. Prolegomena, 10. Leibniz holds, as against Hobbes, that ' there 

 is a right and even a jus strictum before the foundation of the State. 

 He who produces a new thing or puts himself in possession of an 

 already existing thing, which no one has already taken possession 

 of, and who cultivates it and fits it for his use, cannot as a rule be 

 deprived of it without injustice.' Meditation sur la notion commune de 

 la justice (Mollat, p. 78). 



s i Against him who knowingly injures without necessity, there 

 is a right of war.' Juris et aequi elementa (Mollat, p. 33). The object 

 of this first degree of Right is the preservation of peace, which does 

 not necessarily secure happiness but is an essential condition of 

 happiness. ' It is an evil to a man that there is another man who 

 wishes him ill, and it is a good to a man that there is another man 

 who wishes him well.' Axiomes ouprincipes de droit (Mollat, p. 54). 



28 De jure belli et pads, bk. i. ch. i, 5sqq. Facultas is jus proprie 

 aut stride dictum. It includes power (potestas) whether over one's 

 self (which is liberty), or over another (which is authority), also 

 ownership (dominium), whether full (as of property), or less full 

 (as of compact, pledge, credit, to which corresponds debt on the 

 other side). Whewell translate a facultas l jural claim ' in contrast 



