Excerpts from 'The Law'

Excerpts from 'The Law' (http://constitution.org/law/bastiat.htm) that I liked.
Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life
-- physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has
entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and
perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided
us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the
midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our
faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products,
and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its
appointed course.

Life, faculties, production--in other words, individuality, liberty,
property -- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful
political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human
legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws.
On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property
existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
...

Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his
liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of
life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent
upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but
the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an
extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his
person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of
men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect
these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its
reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right.
And the common force that protects this collective right cannot
logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for
which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot
lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another
individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot
lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of
individuals or groups.
...