viii NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 367 



same author to its logical consequences, to be a 

 right to a mere fraction of himself and to the 

 exercise of the powers which exclusively belong 

 to that fraction. Surely it would take a greater 

 sage than Solomon to settle the respective claims 

 of mankind in general, the mother and the educa- 

 tors, to the ownership of a child ; and when these 

 were satisfied, what might remain in the shape of 

 a right to himself would be hardly big enough to 

 form a safe basis for anything, let alone property. 

 Unless my readers can see their way better than 

 I can through this logic-chopping maze, we must 

 give up the attempt to reconcile the two funda- 

 mental propositions of the system we are dis- 

 cussing : the first, that labour is the " only " title 

 to exclusive possession, and the second, that the 

 foundation of this title lies in the right of a man 

 to himself that is to say to the exclusive 

 possession of himself. What our political 

 philosopher appears to me to mean is this. A 

 man is the exclusive possessor of himself and of 

 the powers with which he is endowed by Nature ; 

 therefore he is the exclusive possessor of whatever 

 is brought into existence by the exertion of those 

 powers in the form of labour. On the other 

 hand, a man possesses, exclusively, nothing else 

 than these powers, therefore he cannot be the 

 exclusive possessor of anything but that which 

 they produce. Substantially, as I have said, it is 

 the position taken up by the Physiocrats, and, 



