or_) or its actual owner
and master; whether he also had the right to the substances of which
it was composed, appears, after what we have said above, to be simply
childish. The property, which was absolutely labour-property, was at
once perceived to be such, to be _dominium_ and not merely
_possessio_; it never occurred to anybody either to doubt it or to
believe it. Now, Proudhon declares that general consent cannot justify
property, because general consent to an injustice cannot form the
basis of justice. But apart from the fact that the innate sense of
justice in society is merely a fiction of Proudhon's, as of all
earlier or later Utopians, this proposition may perhaps belong to
metaphysics or ethics, but certainly not to the empirical science of
sociology. For he who puts on the crown, and whom all agree to obey,
is really king, even if he has waded to the throne through seas of
blood. The question, in so far as it is neither political nor a
justification of his mode of action, is not a legal one but purely
ethical. The answer to this question prejudges nothing either as to
life or society, and history knows cases enough of actions which
cannot be approved from the moral standpoint, and yet have turned out
to the advantage of the community.

The opinion that agrarian communism, or the village community, is the
most primitive form of property and the natural form of society, is
also quite untenable. In the first place, because the word _naturally_
cannot be taken in the sense that it implies an unalterable normal
condition, or something fixed; for, in reality, _naturally_ means that
which develops itself, and therefore something in the highest degree
changeable. In the second place, because tribal communism is by no
means such a primitive condition as the Socialists, from Rousseau's
time downwards, seem to believe, and wish to make others believe.
Rather, a state preceded it, in which only movable property, the _jus
utendi atque abutendi re_, was known to man. Races have been found
which possess very scanty conceptions of religion, which have not
recognised the family in the widest implication of the idea; whereas,
on the other hand, no race has been found to whom the idea of property
was not known. Certainly in this case it was only a question of the
possession of weapons and ornaments, and so forth; possession of land,
especially as a communal possession, has only been found among a
comparatively small number of