ACQUIRED RIGHTS
Chapter 1
A summary of the cause of all rights in general
287. To be coherent with these teachings, the cause of all human rights in general, including connatural rights, must be found in a fact. This is the primary result of all that has been said so far.
288. This first fact, which brings rights into being, is more commonly called the title to rights.(89)
289. For a fact to be the cause of a right, it must first be free from all injustice in so far as it constitutes a title of a right. Second, it must impart to us the moral activity or governance in which the essence of right consists, as we have seen from the definition of right.
290. We saw however that this moral activity, based upon a fact, can be considered either as a simple activity acting by itself, in which case we called it jural freedom or freedom by right, or else as acting through some instrument. We called the instrument ownership it could also be called an instrumental power in so far as it adheres to the activity using it. Thus all possible rights were reduced to two ultimate kinds: freedom and ownership.
291. We also saw that pure freedom of right was located only in the supreme active principle constituting the person. Because the person uses all the lower powers as its instruments, they can be called natural ownership.
292. In the rights classed as ownership we can always note the characteristic of a moral-physical connection with the personal principle. By virtue of this connection the supreme personal principle develops the aptitude for, and intention of using the faculties or powers as instruments for its ends without violating morality. This is equally true for every right of ownership.
Let us now see the different ways in which connatural rights and acquired rights come into being.
Notes
(89) Two things are required to constitute a right: a fact and a law. The law is the form of the right and gives it its possibility; the fact is the matter and root of the right. The fact, considered in its relationship to the law, is called a title to the right.