more
good-will one man has, the more he is likely to create among others.
In such matters there is no _possession_, because there is not a
definite amount to be shared; any increase anywhere tends to produce
an increase everywhere.

There are two kinds of impulses, corresponding to the two kinds of
goods. There are _possessive_ impulses, which aim at acquiring or
retaining private goods that cannot be shared; these center in the
impulse of property. And there are _creative_ or constructive impulses,
which aim at bringing into the world or making available for use the
kind of goods in which there is no privacy and no possession.

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the
largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. This is no new
discovery. The Gospel says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we
eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?"
The thought we give to these things is taken away from matters of more
importance. And what is worse, the habit of mind engendered by
thinking of these things is a bad one; it leads to competition, envy,
domination, cruelty, and almost all the moral evils that infest the
world. In particular, it leads to the predatory use of force.
Material possessions can be taken by force and enjoyed by the robber.
Spiritual possessions cannot be taken in this way. You may kill an
artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought.
You may put a man to death because he loves his fellow-men, but you
will not by so doing acquire the love which made his happiness. Force
is impotent in such matters; it is only as regards material goods that
it is effective. For this reason the men who believe in force are the
men whose thoughts and desires are preoccupied with material goods.

The possessive impulses, when they are strong, infect activities which
ought to be purely creative. A man who has made some valuable
discovery may be filled with jealousy of a rival discoverer. If one
man has found a cure for cancer and another has found a cure for
consumption, one of them may be delighted if the other man's discovery
turns out a mistake, instead of regretting the suffering of patients
which would otherwise have been avoided. In such cases, instead of
desiring knowledge for its own sake, or for the sake of its
usefulness, a man is desiring it as a means to reputation. Every
creative impulse is shadowed by a possessive impulse;