Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against _egoism_. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, _e. g._, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact,--_viz._, the propertylessness of the individual. When the law says, _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; omnia rex imperio possidet, singuli dominio_, this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone can control and dispose of "everything," he has _potestas_ and _imperium_ over it. The Communists make this clearer, transferring that _imperium_ to the "society of all." Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are on that account--Christians, or, more generally speaking, religious men, believers in ghosts, dependents, servants of some generality (God, society, etc.). In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him (_e. g._, page 90) the Propriétaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the _proprietor as such_; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world. Neither God nor Man ("human society") is proprietor, but the individual. * * * * * Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property when he calls it theft (_vol_). Passing quite over the embarrassing question, what well-founded objection could be made against theft, we only ask: Is the concept "theft" at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept "property"? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be _stolen_; the water that one draws out of the sea he does _not steal_. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property. Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the _property of all_: if something is "the property of all," then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals. Private property lives by grace of the _law_. Only in the law has it its warrant--for possession is not yet property, it becomes "mine" only by assent of the law--; it is not a fact, not _un fait_ as Proudhon thinks, but a fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is mine not through _me_ but through the--_law_.