Stealing a thief's goods is likewise theft

When crops are harvested from the fields in autumn, field mice will steal some grain and bury it in their own burrows as their food for the winter. When winter approaches, some people will deliberately look for the mice's burrows, dig out the various grains they have stored, and take them home—a single burrow may contain several catties or even ten catties of grain. When a field mouse returns to its burrow and finds the grain gone, some of them will despairingly commit suicide and die; otherwise, with nothing to eat in winter, they would starve to death anyway. Does digging out the field mouse's grain constitute the act of stealing?

What is called stealing is taking what is not given—secretly taking something without the owner's consent, moving it without authorization to one's own side and under one's own name, and claiming it as one's own possession. The owner must be a sentient being; the thief, harboring a thieving mind and a mind intent on stealing, actively takes the object, and in the process employs certain expedient means; finally, the object leaves the owner and arrives at the thief's own location, and the stolen object is successfully possessed.

The field mouse's behavior constitutes stealing: first, it has a thieving mind, taking things secretly so that no one knows; second, it carries the grain away in its mouth, employing expedient means; third, the grain leaves the field and is placed in its own burrow, becoming its own possession. Since it is stealing, the stolen grain must belong to the field mouse; otherwise it would not constitute stealing, and the theft would not be established.

If humans then dig out the grain from the field mouse's burrow, this constitutes stealing from the field mouse. If the field mouse were not stealing but merely keeping the grain in custody for humans, then when humans dig it out, it would not be stealing from the field mouse, but stealing from someone else.

By the same token, secretly taking away something that a thief has stolen is also an act of stealing. This is because the thief, through certain expedient means, has successfully stolen the object and brought it to his own location, becoming the object's new owner; if the owner has not changed, the theft is not established. When someone else then secretly takes away the thief's goods, employing certain expedient means and successfully bringing the object to his own location, he becomes the new owner, and this act constitutes stealing. If there is some other intention in the middle—not wanting to possess the thief's goods—then it is not necessarily stealing.