In vain man raises himself in the social scale, and advances on the road of civilisation—he is as far as ever from Omnipotence. It is one of the attributes of the Divinity, as far as we can understand what is so much above human reason, that between volition and result no obstacle is interposed. God said, ‹Let there be light, and there was light›. And it is the powerlessness of man to express that to which there is so little analogous in his own nature, which reduced Moses to the necessity of supposing between the divine will and the creation of light the intervention of an obstacle in the shape even of a word to be pronounced. But whatever advance man, in virtue of his progressive nature, may be destined yet to make, we may safely affirm that he will never succeed in freeing himself entirely from the obstacles which encumber his path, or in rendering himself independent of the labour of his head and of his hands. The reason is obvious. In proportion as certain obstacles are overcome, his desires dilate and expand, and new obstacles oppose themselves to new efforts. We shall always, then, have labour to perform, to exchange, to estimate, and to value. Property will exist until the consummation of all things, increasing in mass in proportion as men become more active and more numerous; whilst at the same time each effort, each service, each value, each portion of property, considered relatively, will, in passing from hand to hand, serve as the vehicle of an increasing proportion of common and gratuitous utility. * * * * * The reader will observe that we use the word Property in a very extended sense, but a sense which on that account is not the [p236] less exact. ‹Property is the right which a man possesses of applying to his own use his own efforts, or of not giving them away except in consideration of equivalent efforts.› The distinction between Proprietors and Prolétaires, then, is radically false, unless it is pretended that there is a class of men who do no work, who have no control over their own exertions, or over the services which they render and those which they receive in exchange. It is wrong to restrict the term Property to one of its special forms, to capital, to land, to what yields interest or rent; and it is in consequence of this erroneous definition that we proceed afterwards to separate men into two antagonist classes. Analysis demonstrates that interest and rent are the fruit of services rendered, and have the same origin, the same nature, the same rights as manual labour.