ORIGIN' OF THE BIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 675 



ing for something we call justice. Both, were, and both, still are, 

 blind sentiments, working out Nature's " plans " as involuntarily 

 as do our breathing or loving. Our ideas alike of justice and of 

 the right of private property correspond to the age and com- 

 munity in which we live. They may never coincide. At present 

 they do not, in any mind with which I have come in contact. 



And yet we must take account of both of them, or lose our 

 reckoning. We shall find among the causes which have con- 

 tributed to that confusion of ideas regarding the right of property 

 which now confronts and perplexes us, in all our legislation, as 

 well as in our pursuit of theoretical knowledge, the following : 



1. That the origin of the right of property is not one, but 

 several. Ownership of self arose in one way, of means of suste- 

 nance in another, of land in another, and of fellow-beings in 

 another. 



2. That most writers have failed to draw the line between 

 possession maintained by force, or not subject to contest, and 

 ownership which depends absolutely on the recognition by our 

 fellow-beings of our right to the things we call our own. As is 

 remarked by T. E. Cliffe Leslie, in his introduction to Laveleye's 

 " Primitive Property " : 



" No mere psychological explanation of the origin of property 

 is, I venture to affirm, admissible, though writers of great author- 

 ity have attempted to discover its germs by that process in the 

 lower animals. A dog, it has been said, shows an elementary pro- 

 prietary sentiment when he hides a bone, or keeps watch over his 

 master's goods. But property has not its root in the love of pos- 

 session. All living beings like and desire certain things, and, if 

 Nature has armed them with any weapons, are prone to use them 

 in order to get and keep what they want. What requires expla- 

 nation is not the want or desire of certain things on the part of 

 individuals, but the fact that other individuals, with similar wants 

 and desires, should leave them in undisturbed possession, or allot 

 to them a share, of such things. It is the conduct of the commu- 

 nity, not the inclination of individuals, that needs investigation. 

 The mere desire for particular articles, so far from accounting for 

 settled and peaceful ownership, tends in the opposite direction, 

 namely, to conflict and the right of the strongest. No small 

 amount of error in several departments of social philosophy, and 

 especially in political economy, has arisen from reasoning from 

 the desires of the individual, instead of from the history of the 

 community." 



This is one of the profoundest observations ever made on the 

 subject under consideration. The error to which it is an answer 

 is shared by so great an authority as Herbert Spencer, and re- 

 peated in his " Principles of Sociology " (section 536). 



