VIII NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 



self. This is to say, the two men would, in reality, 

 renounce the law of nature, and put themselves 

 under a moral and civil law, replacing natural 

 rights, which have no wrongs, for moral and civil 

 rights, each of which has its correlative wrong. 

 This, I take it, is the root of truth which saves the 

 saying of Paul of Tarsus that " sin came by the 

 law " from being a paradox. The solitary, indivi- 

 dual man, living merely under the so-called law of 

 nature, which cannot be violated, and having 

 rights the contradictions of which are not wrongs, 

 cannot sin. Wrong-doing becomes possible only 

 when, by associating with another man, or other 

 men, for peace and co-operation, the individual 

 becomes implicitly, or explicitly, bound to observe 

 certain rules of conduct in relation to him or them ; 

 any violation of these rules is a wrong. 



Probably none of the political delusions which 

 have sprung from the " natural rights " doctrine 

 has been more mischievous than the assertion that 

 all men have a natural right to freedom, and that 

 those who willingly submit to any restriction of 

 this freedom, beyond the point determined by the 

 deductions of a priori philosophers, deserve the 

 title of slave. But to my mind, this delusion is 

 incomprehensible except as the result of the error 

 of confounding natural with moral rights. It is 

 undoubtedly true that a man, like a tiger or any 

 other animal, has a natural right to freedom, if by 

 that phrase we merely mean that, so far as he is a 



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