a man
eats, or drinks, or wears, so long as it is only what is needful for
life, can no more be thought of as his possession than the air he
breathes. The air is as needful to him as the food; but we do not talk
of a man's wealth of air, and what food or clothing a man possesses more
than he himself requires must be for others to use (and, to him,
therefore, not a real property in itself, but only a means of obtaining
some real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things that give
intellectual or emotional enjoyment may be accumulated, and do not
perish in using; but continually supply new pleasures and new powers of
giving pleasures to others. And these, therefore, are the only things
which can rightly be thought of as giving 'wealth' or 'well being.' Food
conduces only to 'being,' but these to '_well_ being.' And there is not
any broader general distinction between lower and higher orders of men
than rests on their possession of this real property. The human race
may be properly divided by zoologists into "men who have gardens,
libraries, or works of art; and those who have none;" and the former
class will include all noble persons, except only a few who make the
world their garden or museum; while the people who have not, or, which
is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, but care for
nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but ignoble persons:
only it is necessary to understand that I mean by the term 'garden' as
much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen feet square between his
monastery buttresses, as I do the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew; and I
mean by the term 'art' as much the old sailor's print of the _Arethusa_
bearing up to engage the _Belle Poule_, as I do Raphael's "Disputa," and
even rather more; for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind
are almost always associated with vulgar luxury, and become then
anything but indicative of noble character in their possessors. The
ideal of human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with
Athenian sensibility and imagination; but in actual results, we are
continually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality for
refinement.

148. (5) The fifth kind of property is representative property,
consisting of documents or money, or rather documents only--for money
itself is only a transferable document, current among societies of men,
giving claim, at sight, to some definite benefit or advantage, most
commonly