The Virtual Stoa

You can now order books at the Bodleian through Firefox (and, presumably, other browsers), which means that you don’t have to use the fiddly telnet interface any more…

A bit more, carrying on from where we left off. I’ve indented the quotes from Locke, to break up the long paragraphs somewhat.

That it is this common right which a man exercises, when he separates a thing for his own use, and claims to use it, because he has so separated it, will appear [p.54] from the limitation, which Mr. Lock himself puts upon what he calls property, when it is thus acquired.

“God has given us all things richly, is the voice of reason, confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of, to any advantage of life, before it spoils, so much he may, by his labour, fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.”

But certainly, to take no more than we want, or no more than we can make use of, before it will be spoiled, is a limitation unknown to property: it belongs only to the exercise of a common right in a joynt stock; where no one of the commoners has an exclusive right to keep, but all and each of them have a joint right to use.But Mr. Lock endeavours to take off this limitation, and to shew us by what means, upon the same principles, property might be accumulated.

“The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such, as if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver, and diamonds, are things, that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things, which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right to as much as he could use, and property in all he could effect with his labour; all, that his [p.55] industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns, or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods, as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, then he made use of it. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts, that would last good for his eating a while year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; he destroyed no part of the portion of goods, that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells or wool, for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep them by him all his life, he invaded not the rights of others; he might heap up as much of these durable things, as he pleased; the exceeding the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of any thing uselessly in it.”

But this writer seems here to take for granted the point in question. We contend, and he allows, that the right of him, who gathered acorns or plums, extends no farther than to such a quantity of them, as he can use before they are spoiled: and in shewing how this limitation may be removed, he reasons as if there was no such limitation. How else should he, who had collected more plums, than he could use before they were [p.56] spoiled, or more sheep than he wanted to cloath or to feed himself, barter away the plums for nuts, which would keep the year round, or for metal, that would keep as long as he lived? The very notion of bartering implys property. Our author therefore must suppose the man to have property in what would spoil before he can use it; or else he could not suppose him to barter it away: that is, since this contrivance of bartering was introduced, to shew how property might be accumulated, or to take off the limitation of appropriating no more than can be used, whilst it is good; in order to apply this contrivance, he must suppose the limitation to be taken off already, and the man to have property in plums, or sheep, which he does not want, and which he could not use, before they would perish in his hands. Indeed in mankind would consent and submit thus to barter one with another; this consent would be sufficient to take off the limitation, and to introduce a true right of property. For if I knowingly and willingly bargain with another about my own goods, which are in his possession, as if they were his; this act of mine may well be construed as a tacit consent to make them his. And if in like manner mankind would bargain with one another about goods, which belonged to all in common, as if they were the property of the possessor, they tacitly give up their claim to those goods, and so they become his property. But property, when introduced after this manner, is introduced by consent of parties, and not by the labour, which the possessor, or occupant, has employed in separating the things, which he possesses, from the common stock.

More to come…

There’s no Thursday Kitten Blogging today, and there may not be any for a while, I’m afraid. Enkidu - mighty Enkidu, magnificent Enkidu - hurt his front-right paw at the weekend, we’re not sure how. He’s been hobbling around since then, and an x-ray today confirmed that he’s fractured a bone in his foot, and will have to have one of his legs heavily bandaged up for the next month or more, and we have to arrange his life so he won’t be jumping around much, or attempting to climb things, or generally doing cattish and kittenish things. He’s not a happy cat right now, and the next four or five weeks won’t be much fun for him, or for us, as we try to make his life as uneventful as possible, which means in practice that much of the time he’ll be in solitary confinement in our attic. So there’ll be no photographs for a bit, not until a modicum of joy returns to his life, and the spring to his step.

Someone reminded me it was National Poetry Day 2005 today. A couple of years ago, on NPD 2003, I posted a link to a cat-poem by Gavin Ewart, and I’ll post the full text here now. The cat in the poem is coming to the end of his long life; Enkidu’s still very much at the start of his. But it’s a poem that always moves me, and tonight to tears.

A 14-YEAR OLD CONVALESCENT CAT IN THE WINTER

By Gavin Ewart

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre -
because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre -
I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm

to settle on him - postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come - as I cannot forget.

I was surprised to read about DD saying he was still “odds-on” to win the leadership, in response to journalists telling hiim he was crap (or whatever). I wasn’t surprised that he was telling a lie, or at least a falsehood, because I thought that he was still odds-on to win, when in fact he wasn’t, at any major bookmaker; and even if I had known that, life’s too short to get surprised when politicians tell lies, or falsehoods. It just seemed a terribly defensive thing to say, as if there wasn’t anything he could say in support of his leadership bid, or no reason he could give as to why he might bounce back, or as to why his crap speech didn’t matter; all he could say was that the bookies’ didn’t agree with the journalistic conventional wisdom of the moment.

Well, as it turns out, they did. Anyway, this is just a preamble to a link to my old colleague Mike Smithson’s site, which I’m sure you all read anyway, as if anyone’s qualified to comment on things like political betting markets, it’s him.

On the whole, as I think I’ve said, I quite like the new-look Guardian. I think they bollocksed up a few things — theguardian masthead, obviously, the decision not only to have five columns rather than six (Le Monde-style), but also to fill up the right-hand column on the front page with nonsense, and so on — but something I’ve noticed is that I don’t think I’ve been able to read the Giles Foden Diary column since the new paper came out, not because I have any opinion about whether he’s a good diarist or not, but because the sketch they have of him is so off-putting, and makes me want to turn the page. So if anyone could tell me whether I’m missing anything, that’d be quite useful.

Michael Howard has just started wittering on about how “political correctness, turbo-charged by the Human Rights Act, is destroying the British value of fair play”, which I’m taking to be a signal to turn off the telly and go back to work.

I’m working in the Lower Reading Room of the Bodleian Library this afternoon, and because it’s the start of term, parties of new students pass through the reading room from time to time, being shown round the library, and told how it works, and so on. (Most of them will probably never return, but it’s their loss.) I suppose that somewhere along the way they will get to affirm the famous Bodleian Declaration. And it’s an old joke, but I think it’s a good one, to think that anyone might be deterred from burning down the library by reflecting that they’ll be committing perjury as well as arson.

OK, let’s fill up some empty space with a bit more of this, continuing from where we left off last time. For convenient reading, I’ve broken this up into three chunks, although it’s one continuous paragraph in the original 1754 edition of the Institutes of Natural Law:

“Mr. Lock has applied these principles to explane the introduction of property both in moveable and immoveable goods. And if we go on to examine what he says upon the subject, we shall find, that he has mistaken the exercise of a common right for the exclusive right of property.

“He that is nourished, says this writer, by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself, no body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them, more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it robbery, thus to assume to him- [p.53] self what belonged to all in common?”

The answer here is obvious. When those acorns or apples are become a part of his body, we may, if we please, say, that they are his: but the right, which he then has in them, is the same, which he has in his whole person; and is no more to be called a right of property, in the sense that we use this word, when we apply it either to moveable or immoveable goods, than the right, which a man has in his leg or his arm, cam be called by this name. When he gathered them, or when he boyled them, he had likewise a right in them; but it was just such a right as any one else might have had: a right, as one of the joint commoners, to use as much out of the general stock, as he had occasion for. It is by no means necessary either to allow on the one hand, that he had an exclusive right of property in them, or on the other hand to contend, that it was robbery, thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common. There is a middle opinion between these two, which is the opinion already mentioned; that when he gathered them, and was eating them, he exercised his common right of using and enjoying, out of the joynt stock, what his occasions called for. Though therefore we contend, that he could not acquire an exclusive right of property in them, or in any thing else, without the consent of mankind, either express or tacit; yet there is no fear of his being starved, whilst he is waiting for this consent; because in the mean time the exercise of his common right will sufficiently provide for his subsistence.

More soon, maybe.

I saw clips of David Cameron’s speech on Newsnight last night, and thought it was piss-poor. Or, at least, certainly not a speech that made me think, Yes, he’d be a good leader of the opposition. I know I’m not the target audience (thank goodness), but am I missing something, either about the speech or about Mr. Cameron?

UPDATE [4pm, Weds]: So apparently David Davis was no good either (though that third piece was written before he made his speech). This is fun.

My old friend Sasha Abramsky has an essay up in Open Democracy on this, that, and the other. Go and read it.