216. The ground is the same as that of the right of life, of which property is the instrument, viz. the consciousness of a common interest to which each man recognises every other man as contributing
217. Thus the act of appropriation and the recognition of it constitute one act of will, as that in which man seeks a good at once common and personal
218. The condition of the family or clan, in which e.g. land is held in common, is not the negation, but on the contrary the earliest expression of the right of property
219. Its defect lies (a) in the limited scope for free moral development which it allows the associates, (b) in the limited range of moral relations into which it brings them
220. But the expansion of the clan into the state has not brought with it a corresponding emancipation of the individual. Is then the existence of a practically propertyless class in modern states a necessity, or an abuse?
221. In theory, everyone who is capable of living for a common good (whether he actually does so or not) ought to have the means for so doing: these means are property
222. But does not this theory of property imply freedom of appropriation and disposition, and yet is it not just this freedom which leads to the existence of a propertyless proletariate?
223. Property, whether regarded as the appropriation of nature by men of different powers, or as the means required for the fulfilment of different social functions, must be unequal
224. Freedom of trade, another source of inequality, follows necessarily from the same view of property: freedom of bequest is more open to doubt
225. It seems to follow from the general right of a man to provide for his future, and (with certain exceptions) to be likely to secure the best distribution; but it does not imply the right of entail