336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



doctrine, in virtue of which "the right of property obtains a 

 legitimate foundation/' had for one of its motives the exclusion 

 of Socialism and Communism, to which I was then as profoundly 

 averse as I am now. 



Investigations made during recent years into the various forms 

 of social organization, while writing the " Principles of Sociology," 

 have in part confirmed and in part changed the views published 

 in 1850. Perhaps I may be allowed space for quoting from " Po- 

 litical Institutions " a paragraph showing the revised conclusions 

 arrived at : 



At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of land by 

 private persons must be the ultimate state which industrialism brings about. But 

 though industrialism has thus far tended to individualize possession of land while 

 individualizing all other possession, it may be doubted whether the final stage is 

 at present reached. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same 

 footing as ownership established by contract; and though multiplied sales and 

 purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have tacitly assimilated 

 them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The analogy furnished by as- 

 sumed rights of possession over human beings helps us to recognize this possibility. 

 For, while prisoners of war, taken by force and held as property in a vague way 

 (being at first much on a footing with other members of a household), were re- 

 duced more definitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of 

 slaves became general ; and, while it might centuries ago have been thence in- 

 ferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of being 

 permanently established, yet we see that a later stage of civilization, reversing 

 this process, has destroyed ownership of man by man. Similarly, at a stage still 

 more advanced, it may be that private ownership of land will disappear. As that 

 primitive freedom of the individual which existed before war established coercive 

 institutions and personal slavery comes to be re-established as militancy declines, 

 so it seems possible that the primitive ownership of land by the community, which, 

 with the development of coercive institutions, lapsed in large measure or wholly 

 into private ownership, will be revived as industrialism further develops. The 

 regime of contract, at present so far extended that the right of property in mova- 

 bles is recognized only as having arisen by exchange of services or products under 

 agreements, or by gift from those who had acquired it under such agreements, 

 may be further extended so far that the products of the soil will be recognized as 

 property only by virtue of agreements between individuals as tenants and the 

 community as land-owner. Even now, among ourselves, private ownership of 

 land is not absolute. In legal theory land-owners are directly or indirectly tenants 

 of the Crown (which in our day is equivalent to the State, or, in other words, the 

 community) ; and the community from time to time resumes possession after 

 making due compensation. Perhaps the right of the community to the land, thus 

 tacitly asserted, will in time to come be overtly asserted and acted upon after 

 making full allowance for the accumulated value artificially given. . . . There is 

 reason to suspect that, w r hile private possession of things produced by labor will 

 grow even more definite and sacred than at present, the inhabited area, which 

 can not be produced by labor, will eventually be distinguished as something which 

 may not be privately possessed. As the individual, primitively owner of himself, 

 partially or wholly loses ownership of himself during the militant regime, but 

 gradually resumes it as the industrial regime develops, so possibly the communal 



