Human nature has two aspects, personal and social. Every individual has a desire, a need or a want to do or have some thing. He wants to satisfy his bodily needs for food, clothing and shelter, his instinctive needs for family and friendship, his social needs of companionship and company of like human beings, his cultural, intellectual and countless other needs and purposes, ideals and ambitions. He strives to satisfy or realise them. This constitutes his personality-the personal or individual aspect of his life. Had he been alone in the world, like the fictitious Robinson Crusoe, the satisfaction of his needs and desires or the realisation of his aims and purpose would have been determined by the powers and capacities of his body and mind. But no man lives alone. He lives in the company or society of other human beings. Now, in society, when an individual wants to do something it must be directly or indirectly, tacitly or expressly accepted by others.
This is the origin of a right. When the claim or power of a person to do or have something is recognised by others, it becomes a right. In brief, right is a socially recognised claim, arising from the very nature of human personality and society. But why should an individual claim a right and why should others recognise it? Every action evokes a reaction and leads to a social relation. Right invokes claim to action on one side and recognition of the claim on the other. Other men recognise only those claims which promote common good, that is, the good life for all. Society recognises those desires or claims for action which firstly does not injure the equal claims of others, and secondly, promotes its common good.
It means, firstly that the individual must be conscious of his own good and develop his power to realise it, and, secondly, he must be conscious of the good of others and help them in realising their desires and powers. Only those desires and claims of an individual are rights which promote the same and equal desires and claims of others. This is the common end of social life, the common good or welfare and happiness of all. This is, briefly, the essential nature of rights, which consists of three things, the needs of human personality, the social recognition and the common good or the moral nature of social life. The recognition of a right may be given by the conscience of men, by the social opinion of a people or by the State. Each ngency of recognition gives us different kinds of rights. Human conscience recognises moral rights, social opinion, social rights and the recognition by the State gives us legal rights. Furthermore, right is only one end of a social relation, the other end being duty.
A right is my claim on others to do or have something, while duty is the others claim on me to the same freedom of action or enjoyment. Thus every right implies a corresponding duty. A good social relation means a reciprocal right and duty. Where a social relation gives rights to one person or class of persons without imposing duties on them, it creates a relationship of masters and slaves, as it existed in feudal society of the Middle Ages and in the slave society of the ancient times.