For example, it would be admitted that--if there has been no previous arrangement--the profits of any work or enterprise should be divided among those who have contributed to its success in proportion to the worth of their services. And it may be observed, that some thinkers maintain the proposition discussed in the previous section--that Law ought to aim at securing the greatest possible Freedom for each individual--not as absolute and axiomatic, but as derivative from the principle that Desert ought to be requited; on the ground that the best way of providing for the requital of Desert is to leave men as free as possible to exert themselves for the satisfaction of their own desires, and so to win each his own requital. And this seems to be really the principle upon which the Right of Property is rested, when it is justified by the proposition that ‘every one has an exclusive right to the produce of his labour.’ For on reflection it is seen that no labour really ‘produces’ any material thing, but only adds to its value: and we do not think that a man can acquire a right to a material thing belonging to another, by spending his labour on it--even if he does so in the _bona fide_ belief that it is his own property--but only to adequate _compensation_ for his labour; this, therefore, is what the proposition just quoted must mean. The principle is, indeed, sometimes stretched to explain the original right of property in materials, as being in a sense ‘produced’ (_i.e._ found) by their first discoverer;[218] but here again, reflection shows that Common Sense does not grant this (as a _moral_ right) absolutely, but only in so far as it appears to be not more than adequate compensation for the discoverer’s trouble. For example, we should not consider that the first finder of a large uninhabited region had a moral right to appropriate the whole of it. Hence this justification of the right of property refers us ultimately to the principle ‘that every man ought to receive adequate requital for his labour.’ So, again, when we speak of the world as justly governed by God, we seem to mean that, if we could know the whole of human existence, we should find that happiness is distributed among men according to their deserts. And Divine Justice is thought to be a pattern which Human Justice is to imitate as far as the conditions of human society allow.