Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my _own_ might! Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as _I_ entitle, _i. e._--empower, myself to take. Here egoism, selfishness, must decide; not the principle of _love,_ not love-motives like mercy, gentleness, good-nature, or even justice and equity (for _justitia_ too is a phenomenon of--love, a product of love): love knows only _sacrifices_ and demands "self-sacrifice." Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that it wants; it simply decides, What I want I must have and will procure. All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of _love_ into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot be excepted from this. Every one is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from the community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The distributing _board of equity_ lets me have only what the sense of equity, its _loving_ care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less of a check in _collective wealth_ than in that of _individual others_; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, _viz._, on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a _status_, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity.