povvell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 485
is much property which requires a long time for its consumption ; for example, houses may remain to be consumed by a generation or even a succession of generations, but the houses are originally produced from substances which men produce, and a house may not be wholly consumed by the domiciliary user without the pro- duction of intermittent repairs. Land is not produced by man from original substances ; it is only improved by man that it may be rendered more useful through the production of improvements.
We are thus led to understand the nature of property itself. It is something which serves men's purposes and which remains for a time more or less ephemeral in the possession of individuals, or of corporations, or even of governments, and may be ex- changed from one possessor to another at any time while it yet remains; and its continuance in time is ended by the entelic con- sumption, except in the case of land itself, which does not cease with the production of one crop, but continues for the production of others indefinitely as long as proper cultivation is continued.
Men create property by producing it through labor, but when produced to the entelic state it is consumed, yet it remains in stages of production and also in stages of consumption. In any of these stages it may be accumulated.
The foundation of property is primordial appropriation from nature through labor. The tribal man who appropriates fish from the sea constitutes it property, though it may be of an ephemeral nature. Still, while the food may be ephemeral, there may be appropriated other substances of longer value ; thus, he may take whalebone, which remains a longer time as property ; if he appropriates animals from the forest, their skins may be property much longer than their flesh. This appropriation from nature has been universal among mankind, and in its simplest form is always recognized as just.
But there come complications in the appropriation from nature which give rise to differences of opinion about the extent to which and conditions under which this appropriation may be
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