  When a person’s activity is actuated in a moral way, the object of that activity becomes the person’s own, that is, becomes proper to the person in such a way that it cannot be violated without damage to the person in whose ownership it is. Practical experience of this is found in what Rosmini calls ‘jural resentment’, the injured feeling that occurs on the occasion of violation of some right and gives rise to an instinct for repossession or restitution. Such an experience is obviously not a fact related solely to matter; it is fundamentally a fact of the spirit where alone it can be felt. It is also an indication of the sphere of jural freedom within which a person is and must be left free. More importantly, ‘person’ does not possess right, but—because formed by the light of being—is right itself; does not possess freedom, but is freedom. The divisions of activity give rise to two major kinds of rights in people. If what is possessed is such from the very beginning of existence in a human being (life, for example), the individual possesses innate right(s) which may be called ‘natural’ (pertaining essentially to human nature) or ‘rational’ (the rights are what they are and cannot be otherwise). But rights may also be acquired by human beings during the course of life through adventitious activity. When rights have been established in this way, they too are inviolable although there are circumstances, such as lack of use, which dissolve the relationship of ownership and thus leave the field open to others who may wish to extend their activity to the matter in question. Leaving these circumstances aside, however, individual rights cannot be absorbed by others. The State, for example, cannot absorb the inalienable rights proper to persons, nor can it be considered as more than its individual members in such a way that persons can be sacrificed for the sake of society.