e 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.

Christianity is ideally practical in upholding every man's right to
self-control in the interest of all. It distinguishes equity from equality
in distribution of all good, wealth included. Public property is rightly
public when the wants and energies of all the community are best provided
for by such common ownership. Proof in each particular case is essential
against the presumption that individual needs are the best impulses to
provision for welfare. Even common property is limited necessarily to the
numbers who can use it. No property or wealth can exist for anybody
without the control of some human individuals for whom it is accumulated.

_Wants individual._--We a