634 CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 



property in labor, whereby the industry which an individual may have 

 devoted to any object, and by which he has, as it were, impressed upon 

 it the seal of his personality and transformed it and made it serve his 

 wants. 



Tins doctrine, which has also been called that of the appropriation 

 of things by labor, is without doubt more reasonable than that of occu- 

 pation, it releases the question of property from gratuitous hypoth- 

 eses, from useless fictions of a primitive natural state and a subsequent 

 agreement. Instead of making the creation of property depend upon 

 a chance decision, it bases it, on the contrary, upon a stable fact upon 

 which it rests always and everywhere, that is, the activity of man. 

 Nevertheless, this doctrine does not yet present the real reason for the 

 existence of property. 



(The next few pages limit the proposition, but do not contradict it.) 



Emile de Laveleye, Of property and its Primitive forms. Chap, 

 xxvi, p. 381. Paris, 1877. 



Another very general error is also that " property" is spoken 



of as if it were an institution having a fixed form and being always 

 the same, while in reality it is clothed in most diverse forms, and is 

 susceptible to very great unforeseen modifications. 



Puffexdorf, The Law of Nature and Nations, vol. II, Bk. IV, ch. V. 

 sect. <;, and sec. 7, p. 308, ed. 1721*. (English Trans.) 



To proceed, man left this original negative communion, and by cove 

 nant settled distinct properties, not at the same time and by one single 

 act, but by successive degrees; according as either the condition of 

 things or the number and genius of men seemed to require. Thus, the 

 Scythians of old appropriated only their cattle and the furniture of 

 their houses, leaving their land in its primitive communion. Indeed, 

 the peace and tranquillity of mankind, for which the law of nature 

 appears especially concerned, gave no obscure intimation what would 

 be must convenient for men to appoint in this affair. 



For that each man should retain an equal power over all things, or 

 that the universal provision should be laid in common ready for the 

 promiscuous use of every person was not consistent with the safety and 

 quiet of human race; especially after they were multiplied into consider- 

 able numbers, and had cultivated and improved the method of living; 

 because there could not but arise almost infinite clashings from the desire 

 of many persons to the same thing. which was not able to satisfy them all 

 at once; it being the nature of the greater part of what the world affords 

 to be incapable of serving more than one man at the same time. As 

 for the precise order and the particular course of things passing into prop- 

 erty, I conceive we may thus come to an apprehension of them. Most 

 things of immediate use to men, and which are applied to the ends of 

 nourishment and clothing, are not by bare unassisted Nature produced 

 everywhere in so great abundance as to yield a plentiful supply to all. 

 As often, therefore, as two or more should want the same thing, which 

 could not content- them altogether, and should endeavor to sei/e and 

 secure it for themselves, so often there must arise a most probable occa- 

 sion of quarrels and hostilities. Again, many things stand in need of 

 human labour and culture, either for their production or to tit ami pre- 

 pare them for use. Put here it was very inconvenient that a person who 

 had taken no pains about a thing should have an equal right to it with 

 another by whose industry it was either first raised or exactly wrought 



