Hutchinson gazette. [volume] (Hutchinson, Kan.) 1895-1902, 1896-05-28
LIMITED OWNERSHIP.
HAS A MAN THE RIGHT TO OWN.
A WHOLE STATE2
Getting ut tho Fundamental Principles
of Limited Ownership - What the
Great Scholar and Historian Thinks
About It.

Among the profound and scholarly
articles in the April Arena is one from
DR.. Ridpath ON the limitation of owner
ship Of property. We present the fol-
lowing extract from it:
The hints of limitation are to be
found alike in man and nature. Man
is naturally limited animal. There
is no part Of him, no element in him,
that Is not by nature under limitations.
He is not composed of infinlties but fin
tiles. His life is meted and bounded
at every exereme. He begins in proto-
plasm and ends in dissolution. His
entrance is an ascent and his exit
tumble down. All of his powers are
naturally and wholesomely circum-
scribed; and the limitation is not such
as he himself regards as slavery.
Take the case Of the senses. The
sight Of good eye reaches from one
mile to six miles, according to the big
ness Of the thing seen. The finer
sounds we do not hear at all, and the
heaviest cannonade of thunder, beyond
the horizon of few miles, is mere ST.
lence. No animal can feel what 1t
does not touch, or taste what 1t does
notfeel. Raund abOutthe nature of man
there is drawn such a limit that his
whole world ofsense is not twenty miles
in diameter. He does not fly; and his
swimming is fit subject for humOr;
he is a walker or at most rider. 1t
takes time for him to go abroad, and
other time most tedious for him to get
home again. The young man full Of
hope, coming back from across the sea
to the wicket cato of his adored, finds
the last five miles thousand.
She for her part, leaning out Of the
window, reckons the last hour to be
eternity. Both are limited; not even
the exulting hope and the bounding
heart of youth can cancel time and
space.
A large fraction of life-a third, they
say, is spent in sleep; another fraction
in eating and idllng; another in the
weakness of childhood and the weari-
ness Of old age; still another In sickness
and accidents and the mistakes Of avo-
cation. A fifth fraction is expended in
going about and in useful intercourse
with others in like employment. The
sixth and last fraction is consumed in
marrying and giving in marriage and in
attending to the principal business OF
life-which in America is voting q
party ticket.
Certainly these limitations, partly
natural and partly artificial, are 5ufA'
cient to curb life within a narrow cir.
Gle Of activities.
1t is enough to make happy even {
miserable member of human society Il
look around him in the world, to wall
abroad, to hear the song Of birds, the
clamorous music of the clrcada, the
bark of the distant SQUIRREL to see the
flight of many creatures, the swimming
Of some and the scampering away Of
/ others. Though there Is a limitation
upon them ala limitation drawn
around all activity and power as II with
a geometer's hand-yet there is no
complaint, or anguish, or hunting for
change or symptom of revolt. Ma
ture and the living creatures that in
habit her domain are all visibly and
manifestly melted and bounded with
principles and confines which may not
be passed. and yet, taken as whole,
nature is an orderly place, well fitted
for happiness, given to hospitality,
and pervaded with much good cheer.
The only creature that seems to be dis
orderly, troubled, Vexed with cross pur-
poses and unsound sleep, is the princl-
pal inhabitant. What is the matter
with him?
There is much the matter with him;
and his ailments are hard to define. On
the whole, the trouble with mankind
seems to be that the limitations de-
manded in order that society may exist
and the individual be free have not
been laid with the right intent, by the
right authority, in the right place.
They have been laid with wrong in
tent, by illegitlmate authority, in the
very place where they ought not to
have been laid at all. They have been
laid by power, by selfishness, and by
organized tyranny, on the weak and I'M
organized elements Of society, where
there was no need of limitation or any
suggestion Of 1t except the suggestion
to enslave. So much distress, so much
confusion, have arisen from the mis-
placement Of limitation that human be-
ings have become distrustful Of the
principle of Limitation; and as a result
they find no stable equilibrium between
the extremes Of anarchism and slavery.
There is, we must admit, no well-or-
dered, well-defined, and well-established
human society in the world. Every
thing is slipping in the one direction or
in the other. Every human being
seems to be pushing his neighbor either
into slavery or into anarchy. Each ell
bows the other into one of the extremes
of unhappiness and conflict. Nobody
seems to stop to consider whether 1t is
not possible that a social state can exist
in which the limitations are so laid that
life in AZ NAV he as easy and natural as