The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his property.
Property in the civic sense means _sacred_ property, such that I must _respect_ your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians would like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and they have in part brought about an incredible parcellation by this effort. Each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite.
The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as _my_ property, in which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!
With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other.
The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his old age "that he might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only has somewhat of his own,--to wit, a _respected_ property! The more such owners, such cotters,[178] the more "free people and good patriots" has the State.
Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on _respect_, humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the small possessions are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the "free people" change into day-laborers.
If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the great property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut themselves out from it, and would not have been shut out.
Property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the civic proprietor is in truth nothing but a propertyless man, one who is everywhere _shut out_. Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does not own even the paltry point on which he turns around.