results periodically in a passing equilibrium of opposing classes and individuals. It is, however, but an unstable equilibrium, or estate. Those who have less in the estate are no more content to remain long submissive to the division than are those who have a less share in the regime of private property. Those who have lordship in estate are no more content with their present powers than are those who have large private property. Private property and estate are respectively no more than names for a relatively individualized and a relatively socialized distribution of things. The height of private property is no more than the point in the conflict where the beginning of the swing back to estate is inevitable. This change is inevitable because the private property will not stop growing and the number of those included positively or excluded negatively in its dominance of external physical nature also does not stop growing and contending, periodically at least, for greater rights. In time the owner of much private property is too feeble through the very extensiveness of his claims to deny increasing rights to these. The privileges which he is compelled to allow to his inferiors are soon hardened into customs. This is estate. The height of estate is also no more than the point at which the swing back to private property begins. It is the name given to property when the residuum of private rights is least. Each stage contains the next in germ. "Since the tendencies toward both cohesion and dispersion are persistent, the social system simultaneously exhibits phenomena of combination and of competition, of communism and of individualism. Neither order of phenomena can ever exclude the other, but at any given time one or the other order may be ascendant and there may be a rhythm of alternating ascendancy of combination or competition, communism or individualism." 1 Giddings, F. H., Principles of Sociology, p. 399. 1 It may also appear that the diffusion of liberty, understood as relative privilege or security, has been continuous through the alternations of private property and estate. While personal advantage and expansiveness may be more unchecked in an epoch of private property, limitation of such liberty results in extension of privilege to larger numbers, both immediately in greater security of estate and subsequently in the epoch of private property. Liberty is increased quantitatively as well as qualitatively in this inclusion of numbers. Thus the processes of liberation and of limitation are equally essential in the evolution of better distribution of a better social adjustment. In limitation the greater freedom of a few becomes the comparative free-. dom of many. That greater freedom may have been specious, because its chief support was personal force. By limitation liberty may gain in security more than it loses in extent. Social adjustment gains in stability with the multiplication of those who are interested in stability. CHAPTER III ANCIENT OWNERSHIP THE primitive man, like the cercopithecus, probably appropriated only what he ate. Such possession was not ownership. It had no extension in time or in space. It had no other support than the physical strength of the possessor. There was no established relation among men. The Bushman has no house. He lays up nothing for the future. He possesses as an individual the food that he has in his hand, the woman that he keeps by his side. He owns nothing that he does not hold. There is no property until foresight begins. If any ownership may be assumed here it is private property; it is, indeed, individualism. Where the individual is a determinate clan, individualism passes into communism. Early liberty, which has no support but that of physical strength, is checked by a relative equality of condition, because when unaided and unvaried by external powers men are nearly equal. This equality soon becomes the unity of communism. If the savage clan has too little for its needs, and if it must fight with another clan, why should the individual fight with his clansman for more than enough? Or if the savage clan sprang up first where nature was profuse, why should the individual concern himself to take more than enough? The whale cast up by the sea is shared by all the clan, so is the captive. Even after captives and women are used as domestic animals rather than as food and trophies, thereby making land more than a place to pitch tents, doubtless the 367] 23 clan at first owns them. The clan disposes itself on the land not with reference to ownership, but with regard to kinship. If it stays in one place, it obtains a consciousness of territorial claim, but subdivides it only for purposes of cultivation, and periodically reallots it to its members. It is the work rather than the land that is allotted. No one wants to own more land when ownership means only more work for himself. So the Kaffirs have no private property in land, but reallot it.1 Throughout Africa are the survivals of the old communal clan. Primitive communism was general. The Australian clan holds the property even to clothing and women." The Eskimo clan owns its ice pack. The Iroquois lived in long houses, and the Pueblos in their casas grandas. The Jesuits perfected aboriginal communism in Paraguay for the love of God and for the gain of earthly dross. The barbarian who has been fortunate in his allotment and in his possession of "domestic animals" likes his place; and private property must be supposed to have very early and very generally taken the place of primitive communism. For the habit of letting the strong man alone in his possessions is easily developed. Habit is custom. Custom is law. Ownership in land approximates to the already well developed forms of property in weapons, utensils and slaves. Private property is found in process of development among many savage tribes. Thus the Hottentot who has no land, has cattle. Some Hottentots have no girls; others have many and these can buy more oxen. So there are found, just as in civilized society, the improvident poor and the prudent rich who buy girls of six or seven with an eye to 1 Letourneau, op. cit., p. 88. 3 Ibid., p. 37. 2 Ibid., p. 107. 2 future wealth.1 In all periods the status of women and children will be found approximating that of other property. It may be cited as some evidence that a rudimentary stage of private property followed the primitive communism and preceded patriarchal property, that those savage tribes whose ownership is apparently private are lower in the scale than those where family ownership has grown. The African tribes whose individuals are said to own absolutely are inferior to the Javanese dessas in which the common welfare precedes the welfare of the individual. Aristocracy begins among the Kaffirs. The society on the Gaboon has its strong boxes and its social elect, who live nobly, do nothing and are well fed. Among the American Indians may be seen a transition from communism to private property. The Eskimo may pitch his igloo apart from his fellows and forego the right to their help. The concentration incident to private property is as marked in this period of liberty of property as in periods of more advanced civilization. King Kamrasi, on Lake Albert Nyanza, took the goods of his subjects to lavish on his friends, as later English monarchs took the goods of their subjects to lavish upon the monopolists. The Malay king of Bantam was heir in chief to the whole country, and when a man died the sovereign appropriated not only his fortune but his wife and children, whom he made slaves." The New Caledonian chiefs absorbed the ancient rights of the community. The subject's ownership, such as it was, must have been private property, since such confiscation is less possible under family ownership. Monarchy can develop only with private property. 6 3 If this liberty of barbarian ownership did 1 Letourneau, op. cit., p. 79. 2 Ibid., pp. 122-3. exist, it al 3 Ibid., p. 155. • Ibid., p. 77. |