_Future wants certain._--Wants and exertions are readily seen to be at the foundation of all ideas of wealth as indicated above. If we are uncertain as to the continuance of any wants or uncertain as to the conditions for meeting those wants, we stop accumulation of materials for satisfying them. Exertion stops unless the satisfaction to be gained by our effort is foreseen with a reasonable certainty. The farmer is never absolutely sure of returns for his labor upon the cornfield; but he is reasonably certain, and is absolutely certain that the crop will not come without labor. This assumed continuance of individual wants and their relations gives the grand motive for wealth gathering.
The means of protection and support for physical life will be needed by ourselves and our children. Tools of better form and machinery of better manufacture will be needed to reduce exertion in future. Reduced exertion for a given satisfaction will mean a fuller supply of things we are going to need still. If these wants are fully met, we are going to have leisure to satisfy larger and higher wants. It is the certainty that each advance of wealth will bring advancing wants to consume more wealth, that gives a genuine motive to activity in gaining wealth, i.e., in accumulating the things to be used. The degree of uncertainty in all future plans leads to over-estimating the importance of gold, diamonds or any forms of wealth that can most easily be transferred between places or individuals, or be turned to account in each change of necessities.
_Ownership._--The importance of wants and exertion emphasizes the importance of the individual self in all ideas of wealth. The _ownership_ of one's _own_ abilities and their products is absolutely essential to his care for accumulation, and that care is in proportion to his security in such ownership. Directly or indirectly, every exertion and every sacrifice must depend upon confidence that it will bring its object; but wealth-getting has no object without control, in some measure, of results. This fact makes individual ownership an essential to the highest exertion, a natural sequence to the right of liberty.
Property rights are grounded in the general and individual welfare, as shown in human nature and in the progress of the world along the line of protection to property. Those communities are most happy which best protect individual property. As J. E. Thorold Rogers remarks, "Sacredness is accorded to private property, because society prospers by it." Even theorizers who denounce individual property-holding found their argument upon the equity of individual rights in property. War is less harmful than anarchy, because it ensures a measure of control. Slavery has sometimes been less injurious than war in giving security to enjoy a portion of self. But a conquest of freedom by bloodshed is worth its cost in self-control. Civilization advances as individual responsibility for property, as well as everything else, is recognized.