Social-utilitarian theories explain and justify property as an institution which secures a maximum of interests or satisfies a maximum of wants, conceiving it to be a sound and wise bit of social engineering when viewed with reference to its results. This is the method of Professor Ely's well-known book on Property and Contract. No one has yet done so, but I suspect one might combine this mode of thought with the civilization interpretation of the Neo-Hegelians and argue that the system of individual property, on the whole, conduces to the maintaining and furthering of civilization--to the development of human powers to the most of which they are capable--instead of viewing it as a realization of the idea of civilization as it unfolds in human experience. Perhaps the theories of the immediate future will run along some such lines. For we have had no experience of conducting civilized society on any other basis, and the waste and friction involved in going to any other basis must give us pause. Moreover, whatever we do, we must take account of the instinct of acquisitiveness and of individual claims grounded thereon. We may believe that the law of property is a wise bit of social engineering in the world as we know it, and that we satisfy more human wants, secure more interests, with a sacrifice of less thereby than by anything we are likely to devise--we may believe this without holding that private property is eternally and absolutely necessary and that human society may not expect in some civilization, which we cannot forecast, to achieve something different and something better. VI Contract