t need of primitive life, the
bitterest competition for the necessities of existence, and the
concentration of the highest mental gifts then possessed, were
necessary to guide the sight of primitive man to the remoter
consequences of an action or of a quality. That his sight became
sharper and sharper in proportion as the implement once invented
showed itself to be insufficient, and became more and more
differentiated in its adaptation to the different kinds of labour,
follows as a matter of course. But the decisive action occurred when
the anthropoid ape for the first time mechanically worked up natural
objects, for by doing so he was enabled to exploit nature rationally,
according to his desires and requirements, to emancipate himself from
the limitations of existence as regards place and climate, to break
those chains of partial action which weigh upon everything belonging
to the animal world.

One must take fully into consideration the difficulties under which
primitive man made his first tools; but one must, however, realise
still more the immeasurable advantages which proceed from the
possession, and the disadvantages which arise from the want, of a
tool, in order to perceive that man had a vital interest in preserving
permanently by him the objects which he had produced. If in his
inexperience he at first threw away his laboriously acquired treasure
after using it, yet soon the oft-recurring need for it, and the
trouble of remaking it, must have taught him better. And by not
leaving the tool behind him for someone else, he made not only a
tremendous step in advance in the satisfaction of his needs, but also
took a step higher in the social scale of his tribe. The others had
need of him, admired him, feared or flattered him; they perhaps sought
to take his treasured tool away from him; he had therefore to defend
himself against others, and all these facts formed still more strongly
the desire to keep it for himself permanently and exclusively. The
conception of property flashed upon the human mind. It sprang from the
sweat of labour; and human culture begins not with equality but with
property.

This rather lengthy digression has been necessary in order that we may
be able to oppose actual facts to the logical subtlety of Proudhon,
which appears to-day to have a greater power than ever of leading men
astray. The question whether the producer of a stone celt was merely
the user of its advantages (Latin, _possess