10          THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM

in the nature of things for concrete objects to be used in different places at the same time. This fact existing, no person can remove from another's possession and take to his own use another's concrete possession without thereby depriving that other of all opportunity to use that which he created, and for this reason it became socially necessary, since successful society rests on individual initiative, to protect the individual creator in the use of his concrete creations by forbidding others to use them without his consent. In other words, it became necessary to institute property in concrete things.

But all this happened so long ago that we of to-day have entirely forgotten why it happened. In fact, it is very doubtful whether, at the time of the institution of property, those who effected it thoroughly realized and understood the motive of their course. Men sometimes do by instinct and without analysis that which conforms to right reason. The institutions of property may have been governed by circumstances inhering in the nature of things, without realizing that, had the nature of things been the opposite, they would not have institutional property. But, be that as it may, even supposing that they thoroughly understood their course, we at any rate, have pretthy nearly forgotten their understanding. And so it has come about that we consider it a sacred thing; that we have set up the god of property on an alter as an object of idol-worship; and that most of us are not only doing what we can to strengthen and perpetuate his reign

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS           11

within the proper and original limits of his sovereignty, but also are mistakenly endeavoring to extend his dominion over things and under circumstances which, in their pivotal characteristic, are precisely the opposite of those out of which his power developed.

All of which is to say, in briefer compass, that from the justice and social necessity of property in concrete things we have erroneously assumed the justice of property in abstract things,--that is, of property in ideas,--with the result of nullifying to a large and lamentable extent that fortunate element in the nature of things, in this case not hypothetical, but real,--namely, the immeasurably fruitful possibility of the use of abstract things by any number of individuals in any number of places at precisely the same time, without in the slightest degree impairing the use thereof by any single individual. Thus we have hastily and stupidly jumped to the conclusion that property in concrete things logically implies property in abstract things, whereas, if we had had the care and the keenness to accurately analyze, we should have found that the very reason which dictates the advisability of property in concrete things denies the advisability of property in abstract things. We see here a curious instance of that frequent mental phenomenon, the precise inversion of the truth by a superficial view.

Furthermore, were the condition the same in both cases, and concrete things capable of use by different persons at different places at the same time, even then, I say, the institution of property in concrete things, though under those conditions manifestly absurd, would