e and limitations of the desire for
property. There seem to be good grounds for supposing that this is a
true specific instinct, and not merely the result of habit or of the
intellectual choice of means for satisfying the desire of power.
Children, for instance, quarrel furiously at a very early age over
apparently worthless things, and collect and hide them long before they
can have any clear notion of the advantages to be derived from
individual possession. Those children who in certain charity schools are
brought up entirely without personal property, even in their clothes or
pocket-handkerchiefs, show every sign of the bad effect on health and
character which results from complete inability to satisfy a strong
inherited instinct. The evolutionary origin of the desire for property
is indicated also by many of the habits of dogs or squirrels or magpies.
Some economist ought therefore to give us a treatise in which this
property instinct is carefully and quantitatively examined. Is it, like
the hunting instinct, an impulse which dies away if it is not indulged?
How far can it be eliminated or modified by education? Is it satisfied
by a leasehold or a life-interest, or by such an arrangement of
corporate property as is offered by a collegiate foundation, or by the
provision of a public park? Does it require for its satisfaction
material and visible things such as land or houses, or is the holding,
say, of colonial railway shares sufficient? Is the absence of unlimited
proprietary rights felt more strongly in the case of personal chattels
(such as furniture and ornaments) than in the case of land or machinery?
Does the degree and direction of the instinct markedly differ among
different individuals or races, or between the two sexes?

Pending such an inquiry my own provisional opinion is that, like a good
many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by
an avowed pretence; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can
be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct
by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his
instinct of combat and adventure at golf. If this is so, and if it is
considered for other reasons undesirable to satisfy the property
instinct by the possession, say, of slaves or of freehold land, one
supposes that a good deal of the feeling of property may in the future
be enjoyed even by persons in whom the instinct is abnormally strong