[p. 238]
Explanation. My powers and skills are indeed my very own property, but they also have an externality. According to the abstract determination they are already external insofar as I can distinguish them from myself, the simple I. But also in themselves the powers and skills are individual and limited, and do not constitute my essence itself. My essence, which is in itself universal, is distinct from these particular determinations. Finally, they are external in their use. Precisely in that I use them, I make them into an external form, and what is produced through them is some external existence. In the use there lies not the power as such, but it maintains itself, notwithstanding that it has externalised itself and has made this its externalisation into an existence distinct from it. This externalisation of the power is also external insofar as it is something limited and finite. – Insofar as something is my property, I have indeed bound it up with my will, but this connection is not absolute; for were it such, my will would have to lie, in its essence, in this thing. Rather, I have here only made my will into something particular and can, because it is free, sublate this particularity again.
§ 13
Inalienable are those goods which are not so much my possession or property as they rather constitute my very own person or are contained in my essence, such as freedom of the will, ethical life, religion, etc.
Explanation. Only those goods are alienable which are already external by their nature. Personality, for example, I cannot regard as something external to me, for insofar as someone has given up his personality, he has made himself a thing. But such an alienation would be null and void. – One would alienate his ethical life if he, for example, undertook towards another to carry out on his command all possible actions, crimes
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