the world is at least owned by more people
than was once the case. That these changes and readjustments of
property rights will be carried still further he thinks there can be
no doubt.

Stevens draws similar conclusions about the evil effects of property
rights. The great war and all wars, he asserts, are based upon
existing social conditions--upon the organization of the family, the
school, the state, the church, upon the institution of property, with
its corollaries of foreign markets and other industrial relations.
Protection of trade, which works in the interest of the owner classes,
indirect taxes which fall upon the consumer, the labor system by
which, at the present time, the laborer receives but a small share of
the profits, but must become when necessary the defender of the
interests in which he does not share--all these things we hear being
charged vigorously with being the causes of wars, including the recent
great conflict. This system is blamed not only for our great
international wars, but it is looked upon as the germ of wars to come,
internal wars, when international wars shall have ceased, or
temporarily have been abated. When, perhaps, the restrictions that
assume that the gain of one country is the loss of another have
satisfactorily been adjusted, the system that maintains that the
capitalist can prosper only at the expense of the laborer will come up
for final settlement (97).

All these views, from a psychological point of view, seem to be open
to the criticism that they tend to consider the world one-sidedly and
by a certain abstraction. They are dealing with a world governed only
by economic laws. It is easy to construct these ideal worlds. They are
simple and they lend themselves readily to the purposes of a political
calculus. Finding economic motives in individual life, in the social
life and in politics, and in history it is tempting both to explain
the past and plan the future in terms of the entities and principles
of economics. But after all it is only when we consider economic
motives in their relations to all the motives behind human conduct
that we are likely to see the economic motives in history in their
true light. Then we shall very much doubt whether property has been in
any real sense the cause of wars, or that the abrogation of property
rights will be the means of establishing perpetual peace. We shall see
that economic motives themselves are but aspects of deeper motives,
an