366 NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS viir 



rightfully appeal to this wonderful labour-test of 

 ownership ? 



Is there any logical way out of the following 

 argumentation, the like of which is perhaps to be 

 found only in " Alice in Wonderland " ? The exer- 

 tion of labour in production is the only title to 

 exclusive possession. No gratuitous offering of 

 Nature can be the subject of such private owner- 

 ship. Therefore a man can have no exclusive 

 possession of himself, except in so far as he is the 

 product of the exertion of his own labour and not 

 a gratuitous offering of Nature. But it is only a 

 very small part of him which can in any sense be 

 said to be the product of his own labour. The 

 man's physical and mental tendencies and capaci- 

 ties, dependent to a very large extent on heredity, 

 are certainly the " gratuitous offering of Nature ; " 

 if they belong to anybody, therefore, they must 

 belong to the whole of mankind, who must be, so 

 to speak, a kind of collective slaveowners, all of 

 each. So much of the man as depends on 

 the care taken of him in infancy and childhood is 

 the property of his mother, or of those who took 

 her place. Another smaller portion belongs to 

 the people who educated him. What remains is 

 his own. So that the man's right to himsrlf and 

 to all his powers and to all the fruits of his labour, 

 which the writer of " Progress and Poverty " makes 

 the foundation of his system, turns out, if we 

 follow another fundamental proposition of the 



