But this similarity of sounds should not mislead the reader. Whilst communism is the negation of Property, we find in our doctrine of Community the most explicit affirmation and the most positive demonstration of property. If the legitimacy of property has appeared doubtful and inexplicable, even to men who are not communists, the reason is, that they believe that it concentrates in the hands of some, to the exclusion of others, those gifts of God which were originally common. We believe we have entirely dissipated that doubt by demonstrating that what is common by providential destination remains common in all human transactions,—the domain of property never extending beyond that of value—of right onerously acquired by services rendered. Thus explained, property is vindicated; for who but a fool could pretend that men have no right to their own labour—no right to receive the voluntary services of those to whom they have rendered voluntary services? There is another word upon which I must offer some explanation, [p247] for of late it has been strangely misapplied—I mean the word ‹gratuitous›. I need not say that I denominate gratuitous, not what costs a man nothing because he has deprived another of it, but what has cost nothing to anyone. When Diogenes warmed himself in the sun, he might be said to warm himself gratuitously, for he obtained from the divine liberality a satisfaction which exacted no labour either from himself or his contemporaries. Nor does the heat of the sun’s rays cease to be gratuitous when the proprietor avails himself of it to ripen his corn and his grapes, seeing that in selling his grapes or his corn he is paid for his own services and not for those of the sun. This may be an erroneous view (in which case we have no alternative but to become communists); but at any rate this is the sense in which I use the word ‹gratuitous›, and this is what it evidently means.