What it is to lay down a Right
To Lay Downe a mans Right to any thing, is to Devest himselfe
of the Liberty, of hindring another of the benefit of his own
Right to the same. For he that renounceth, or passeth away his Right,
giveth not to any other man a Right which he had not before;
because there is nothing to which every man had not Right by Nature:
but onely standeth out of his way, that he may enjoy his own
originall Right, without hindrance from him; not without hindrance
from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man,
by another mans defect of Right, is but so much diminution of
impediments to the use of his own Right originall.
Thomas Hobbes, "The Leviathan." Chapter XIV
