This last class consists of things which are merely rights and advantages secured by law, and dependent on existing social conditions; and it can be easily understood how they would disappear under any attempt to seize them. But the remaining three quarters of our capital consists of material things; and what we have seen with regard to them may strike many people as incredible; for the moment we imagine them violently seized and distributed, they seem to dwindle and shrivel up; and the share of each individual suggests to one’s mind nothing but a series of ludicrous pictures—pictures of men whose heritage in all this unimaginable wealth is an acre of ground, two wheels of a steam-engine, a bedroom, a pearl pin, and the tenth part of a pig. [Sidenote ◆1 Capital has no value at all, except when vivified by use;] ◆¹ The explanation, however, of this result is to be found in the recognition of an exceedingly simple fact: that the capital of a country is of hardly any value at all, and is, as capital, of no value at all, when regarded merely as an aggregate of material things, and not as material things made living by their connection with life. The land, which is worth _fifteen hundred million pounds_, depends for its value on the application of human labour to it, and the profitable application of labour depends on skill and intelligence. The value of the houses depends on our means of living in them—depends not on themselves, but on the way in which they are inhabited. What are railways or steamships, regarded as dead matter, or all the machinery belonging to all the manufacturing companies? Nothing. They are no more wealth than a decomposing corpse is a man. They become wealth only when life fills them with movement by a power which, like all vital processes, is one of infinite complexity: when multitudes are massed in this or in that spot, or diffused sparsely over this or that district; when trains move at appropriate seasons, and coal finds its way from the mine to the engine-furnace. The only parts of the capital in existence at any given moment, which deserve the name of capital as mere material things, are the stores of food, fuel, and clothing existing in granaries, shops, and elsewhere; and not only is the value of these proportionately small, but, if not renewed constantly, they would in a few weeks be exhausted. [Sidenote ◆1 And it obviously cannot be used if it is equally distributed.] [Sidenote ◆2 Income is all that could conceivably be thus divided.]