The same is the case with property in buildings, clothes, wares; with property in the land; with property in money. Every imaginary property calls forth in me a non-corresponding want which cannot always be gratified, and deprives me of the possibility of acquiring for my true and sure property--my own body--that information, that skill, those habits, improvements, which I might have acquired. The result is always that I have spent (without gain to myself,--to my true property) strength, sometimes my whole life, on that which never has been, and never could be, my property. I provide myself with an imaginary "private" library, a "private" picture gallery, "private" apartments, clothes; acquire my "own" money in order to purchase with it every thing I want, and the matter stands thus,--that I, being busy about this imaginary property, which is not, and cannot be my property, however I may call it, and which is no object for activity, leave quite out of sight that which is my true property, upon which I may really labour, and which really may serve me, and which always remains in my power. Words have always a definite meaning until we purposely give them a false signification. What does property mean? Property means that which is given to me alone, which belongs to me alone, exclusively; that with which I may always do everything I like, which nobody can take away from me, which remains mine to the end of my life, and which I ought to use in order to increase and to improve it. For every man such property is only himself. It is in this very sense that imaginary property is understood, that very property for sake of which (making it impossible for this imaginary property to become a real one) all the sufferings of this world exist,--wars, executions, judgments, prisons, luxury, depravity, murders, and the ruin of mankind. What, then, will result from the circumstance that ten men plough, hew wood, make boots, not from necessity, but in acknowledgment that man needs work, and that the more he works, the better it will be for him? This will come out of it: that ten men, or even one single man, by thought and in deed, will show men that this fearful evil from which they are suffering, is not the law of their destiny, nor the will of God, nor any historical necessity, but is a superstition not at all strong or overpowering, but weak and null, which one need only leave off believing in, as in idols, in order to get rid of, and to destroy it even as a frail cobweb is swept away.