What, then, is property? Men are accustomed to think that property is something really belonging to man, and for this reason they have called it property. We speak indiscriminately of our own house and our own land. But this is obviously an error and a superstition. We know, and if we do not, it is easy to perceive, that property is only the means of utilizing other men's labour. And another's labour can by no means belong to me. It has nothing in common with the conception of property,--a conception very exact and precise. Man has been, and will always call his own that which is subject to his own will and joined with his own consciousness. As soon as a man calls his own something which is not his body, but which he should like to be subject to his will as his body is, then he makes a mistake, and gets disappointment, and suffering, and compels other people to suffer as well. Man calls his wife his own, his children, his slaves, his belongings, his own too; but the reality always shows him his error: and he must either get rid of this superstition, or suffer, and make others suffer. Now we, having nominally renounced the possessing of slaves, owing to money (and to its exactment by the government), claim our right also to money; that is, to the labour of other men. But as to our claiming our wives as our property, or our sons, our slaves, our horses,--this is pure fiction contradicted by reality, and which only makes those suffer who believe in it; because a wife or a son will never be so subject to my will as my body is; therefore my own body will always remain the only thing I can call my true property; so also money, property,--will never be real property, but only a self-deception and a source of suffering, and it is only my own body which will be my property, that which always obeys me, and is connected with my consciousness. It is only to us, who are so accustomed to call other things than our body our own, that such a wild superstition can appear to be useful for us, and without evil results; but we have only to reflect upon the nature of the matter to see how this, like every other superstition, brings with it only dreadful consequences. Let us take the most simple example. I consider myself my own, and another man like myself I consider my own too. I must understand how to cook my dinner: if I were free from the superstition of considering another man as my property, I should have been taught this art as well as every other necessary to my real property (that is, my body); but now I have it taught to my imaginary property, and the result is that my cook does not obey me, does not wish to humour me, and even runs away from me, or dies, and I remain with an unsatisfied want, and have lost the habit of learning, and recognize that I have spent as much time in worry about this cook as I should have spent in learning the art of cooking for myself.