e reconciled in the easiest and most
joyful manner; and that, instead of fearing the people who surround us,
it will become necessary for us to draw near to them and to love them.

The apparently insoluble economical and social problem is merely the
problem of Kriloff's casket. {256} The casket will simply open. And it
will not open, so long as people do not do simply that first and simple
thing--open it.

A man sets up what he imagines to be his own peculiar library, his own
private picture-gallery, his own apartments and clothing, he accumulates
his own money in order therewith to purchase every thing that he needs;
and the end of it all is, that engaged with this fancied property of his,
as though it were real, he utterly loses his sense of that which actually
constitutes his property, on which he can really labor, which can really
serve him, and which will always remain in his power, and of that which
is not and cannot be his own property, whatever he may call it, and which
cannot serve as the object of his occupation.

Words always possess a clear significance until we deliberately attribute
to them a false sense.

What does property signify?

Property signifies that which has been given to me, which belongs to me
exclusively; that with which I can always do any thing I like; that which
no one can take away from me; that which will remain mine to the end of
my life, and precisely that which I am bound to use, increase, and
improve. Now, there exists but one such piece of property for any
man,--himself.

Hence it results that half a score of men may till the soil, hew wood,
and make shoes, not from necessity, but in consequence of an
acknowledgment of the fact that man should work, and that the more he
works the better it will be for him. It results, that half a score of
men,--or even one man, may demonstrate to people, both by his confession
and by his actions, that the terrible evil from which they are suffering
is not a law of fate, the will of God, or any historical necessity; but
that it is merely a superstition, which is not in the least powerful or
terrible, but weak and insignificant, in which we must simply cease to
believe, as in idols, in order to rid ourselves of it, and in order to
rend it like a paltry spider's web. Men who will labor to fulfil the
glad law of their existence, that is to say, those who work in order to
fulfil the law of toil, will rid themselves of that frightful
superstiti