CHAPTER V.
PROPERTY AND PROPERTY RIGHTS
On Mars all property is considered as belonging to God, its Creator, who provided it for the enfoldment and comfort of His creatures. No individual lays claim to property in the sense that you Earth dwellers do.
Through God's love does man inhabit a portion of the material universe, but only for a season. Man comes into material being to express life and acquire an individuality, after which he passes out of material bondage, when his place is taken by another.
At man's transition he takes with him only character, nothing else. If the things he has striven for during his material life have been but chimeras: the material things of life: the fruits of the Earth, then in that case he will find himself poor indeed. The only real wealth, the only thing worth striving for, is a knowledge of God and His Kingdom. And with us Martians a knowledge of God is the ultimate goal sought for. Hence all material things to the Martian are but expedients, soon to be forgotten.
Material wealth is an abstraction. Its usual evidence is the possession of property, which may be money, land, goods or chattels, as the case may be. In final analysis this concrete evidence of wealth is not real.
Money is nothing more or less than a stamped token entitling the possessor to so much human effort, for the real value behind money, after all, is but so much human energy or force, varying according to its quality and its worth.
Other forms of property such as goods and chattels, are the result of human endeavor and may be secured by the exchange of money, or it may be produced by the owner.
Wealth represented by lands, which were created by God for the benefit of all humankind, and not for the individual, is the so-called right-secured by barter, exchange or inheritance, to use or withhold from use, at the caprice of the owner—of a certain piece or portion of the planet. Under a legal fiction the title to land extends to the center of the Earth and to infinity in an opposite direction!