In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic communities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as sacred. A "sense of right" and "law-abiding mind" of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new "sacred law," the "law of society," the law of mankind, the "right of all," and the like. The right of "all" is to go before _my_ right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a _right of all_ will I defend it, but as _my_ right; and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (_e. g._ to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right unabridged for _himself_, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take care for all though,--let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all. But the social reformers preach to us a "_law of society_." There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society _makes him out_ in the right, _i. e._ when he lives according to society's _statutes_ and so is--_loyal_. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a "society" _à la_ Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have not _my_ right but _foreign_ right. In considerations of right the question is always asked, "What or who gives me the right to it?" Answer: God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only _your might_, _your_ power gives you the right (your reason, _e. g._, may give it to you). Communism, which assumes that men "have equal rights by nature," contradicts its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by nature. For it is not willing to recognize, _e. g._, that parents have "by nature" rights as against their children, or the children as against the parents: it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc., no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babouvist principle[130] rests on a religious, _i. e._ false, view of things. Who can ask after "right" if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself? Is not "right" a religious concept, _i. e._ something sacred? Why, "_equality of rights_," as the Revolution propounded it, is only another name for "Christian equality," the "equality of the brethren," "of God's children," "of Christians," etc.: in short _fraternité_. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed with Schillers words: Many a year I've used my nose To smell the onion and the rose; Is there any proof which shows That I've a right to that same nose?