Works of art, as things, may, on the other hand, be imitated or otherwise modeled, at will, from a copy of them which was rightfully acquired, and those imitations may be publicly sold, without requiring the consent of the author of the original or of the master who supervised the artist in developing the artist's ideas. A drawing, which anyone has drawn, or had engraved by another, or executed in stone, metal, or stucco, may be copied, and the copies publicly sold; as everything, that one can perform with his thing in his own name, does not require the consent of another. Lippert's "Dactyliotec" may be imitated by every possessor of it who understands it, and exposed to sale, and the inventor of it has no right to complain of encroachment on his business. For it is a work (an opus, not an opera; these terms are mutually exclusive) which everybody who possesses it may, without even mentioning the name of the inventor, assume title over it, and also imitate it and use it in public trade, in his own name, as his own. But the writing of another is the speech of a person (opera); and whoever publishes it can speak to the public only in the name of this other, and say nothing more of himself than that the author makes the following speech to the public through him (Impensis Bibliopola). For it is a contradiction, to make in his own name a speech which he knows, and conformably to the demand of the public, must be the speech of another. The reason why all works of art of others may be imitated for public sale, but books, to which an editor is designated, dare not be counterfeited, lies in this: that artworks are works (opera), but books are acts (operae); artworks may be as things existing for themselves, but books can have their existence only in a person. Consequently, books belong to the person of the author exclusively;**** and the author has an inalienable right (jus personalissimum) always to speak himself through every other, that is, nobody dares make the same speech to the public except in the author's name. [****Footnote: The author, and the owner of the copy, may both say of it with equal right: "It is my book!" However, each would say this in a different sense. The author takes the book as a writing or a speech; the owner interprets the book as being the mute instrument merely of the delivering of the speech to him or to the public, that is, as a copy. The author does not have ownership rights over the thing, namely, the copy of the book (for the owner may burn that copy before the author's face); instead, the author has an innate right, in the author's own person, to wit, to hinder another from reading the copy to the public without the author's consent, which consent can by no means be presumed, because the author may have already given it exclusively to another editor.]