Struggle for Rights a Personal Duty
Irritability, that is the capacity to feel pain at the violation of one’s legal rights, and action, that is the courage and the determination to repel the attack, are, in my eyes, the two criteria of a healthy feeling of legal right.
I must refrain from elaborating any further this interesting and instructive subject of the pathology of the feeling of legal right; but I would, however, ask permission to make a few remarks just here.
The sensitiveness of the feeling of legal right, otherwise the sentiment of law, is not the same in all individuals, but it increases and decreases according as, and to the extent that, each individual class or people experiences the law as a moral condition of existence; and not the law in general only, but its several parts. This I have shown above, in reference to property and reputation. As a third example, I may here add, marriage. What reflections does not the manner in which different individuals, nations, codes of law, look at adultery, suggest!
The second element in the feeling of legal
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