We have now gone completely through the list of artificially created rights, without finding one that does not derive all its validity from connection with some pre-existing right. We have seen that among so-called rights none whatever are genuine by reason merely of any extrinsic sanction they may have received, but that all real rights either are such intrinsically, or are based upon, or embody within them, some right purely intrinsic. We have seen that there are two rights endued with this intrinsic character--viz., that of absolute control over one's own self or person, and that of similar control over whatever else has by honest means come into one's exclusive possession, or become due or owing to him exclusively; and, because these rights, wherever the conditions necessary for their exercise occur, of necessity exist, springing up at once and full grown, in the necessary absence of any antagonistic rights that could prevent their existing, I have not scrupled to call them 'natural;' nor do I think that further apology can be needed for such application of the epithet. To maintain, moreover, that these natural rights constitute the essence of all artificial rights, was simply equivalent to saying that no so-called right can be genuine unless requiring for its satisfaction no more than already actually belongs or is due to its claimant; while every right which does require no more must be genuine, because there can nowhere exist the right to withdraw or to withhold from any one anything that is exclusively his. These seeming truisms are indeed diametrically opposed to a theory which enters on its list of friends names no less illustrious than those of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Bentham, and Mill. Still, whoever, undeterred by so formidable an array of adverse authorities, is prepared to accept the description of rights of which they form part, will have no difficulty in framing a theory of justice perfectly conformable thereunto. The justice of an action consists in its being one, abstinence from which is due to nobody. The justice of inaction--for just or unjust behaviour may be either active or passive--consists in there being nobody to whom action, the reverse of the inaction, is due. 'Justice, like many other moral attributes, may be best defined by its opposite,' and all examples of injustice have this one point in common, that they withhold or withdraw from some person something belonging or due to him, or in some other way infringe his rights, and consequently wrong him. Conversely, a point common to and characteristic of all just acts and omissions, is that they neither prevent anybody from having that which is due to him, nor in any other way infringe any one's rights, and that they consequently do no one any wrong. It is not essential to the justice of conduct that anything due be thereby rendered. It suffices that nothing due be withheld. All conduct is just by which nobody is wronged.