vni NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 351 



and moral or civil laws lies in this : that con- 

 sistent and thoroughgoing action, based upon the 

 law of nature and the natural rights which flow 

 from it, tends to benefit the individual at the 

 expense of all other individuals whose needs and 

 desires are of the same kind ; and, so far from 

 bringing about a state of peace among such in- 

 dividuals, necessitates a state of war that is to 

 say of either conscious or unconscious competition 

 among them. The ceaseless and pitiless " straggle 

 for existence " which obtains throughout the whole 

 world of living things is, in truth, the inevitable 

 consequence of the circumstance that each living 

 being strives knowingly, or ignorantly, to exert 

 all its powers for the satisfaction of its needs ; 

 and asserts a tacit claim to possess (to the ex- 

 clusion of other beings) all the space on the 

 earth's surface which it can occupy and to appro- 

 priate all the 'subsistence which it can utilise. 1 

 The state of sentient nature, at any given time, 

 is the resultant of the momentarily balanced 

 oppositions of millions upon millions of indi- 

 viduals, each doing its best to get all it can and 

 to keep what it gets; each, in short, zealously 



1 Sixteen centuries ago, Ulpian drew the conclusion that, 

 according to the "jus naturale," the elements "mare," "aer," 

 and, at any rate, "litora," are the common property of all 

 living things. Isidore of Seville (see Voigt, i. 576), probably 

 founding himself on Ulpian, reckons "communis omnium 

 possessio et omnium una libertas, acquisitio eonun quse co3lo, 

 terra manque capiuntur," as among the natural rights of nn-n. 



