According to exterior circumstances, he will never want, because men,
seeing that he does not shirk work, will always try to make his labour
most productive to them, as they arrange a mill by running water; and
that his labour may be more productive, they will provide for his
material existence, which they will never do for men who aim at
acquiring property. The providing for material wants, is all that a man
requires.
According to interior conditions, such a man will be always happier than
he who seeks for property, because the latter will never get what he is
aiming at, and the former in proportion to his strength (even the weak,
old, dying, according to the proverb, with a Kored in his hands), will
always receive full satisfaction, and the love and sympathy of men.
One of the consequences of this will be, that certain odd, half-insane
persons will plough, make boots, and so on, instead of smoking, playing
cards, and riding about, carrying their dulness with them, from one
place to another, during the ten hours which every brain worker has at
his command.
Another result will be, that these silly people will demonstrate in
deed, that that imaginary property for the sake of which men suffer, and
torment themselves and others, is not necessary for happiness, and even
impedes it, and is but a superstition; and that true property is only
one's own head, hands, feet; and that, in order to utilize this true
property usefully and joyfully, it is necessary to get rid of that false
idea of property outside one's own body, on which we waste the best
powers of our life.
Another result will be, that these men will demonstrate, that, when a
man leaves off believing in imaginary property, then only will he make
real use of his true property,--his own body, which will yield him fruit
an hundred-fold, together with happiness such as we have no idea as yet;
and he will be a useful, strong, kind man, who will everywhere stand on
his own feet, will be always a brother to everybody, will be
intelligible to all, desired by all, and dear to all.
Then men, looking at one,--at ten such "silly" men will understand what
they have all to do to unfasten that dreadful knot in which they have
all been tied by the superstition respecting property, and to get rid of
the miserable condition under which they are now groaning, and from
which they do not know how to free themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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