One of the chief characteristicks of the golden age, of the age in which
neither care nor danger had intruded on mankind, is the community of
possessions: strife and fraud were totally excluded, and every turbulent
passion was stilled by plenty and equality. Such were indeed happy
times, but such times can return no more. Community of possession must
include spontaneity of production; for what is obtained by labour will
be of right the property of him by whose labour it is gained. And while
a rightful claim to pleasure or to affluence must be procured either by
slow industry or uncertain hazard, there will always be multitudes whom
cowardice or impatience incite to more safe and more speedy methods, who
strive to pluck the fruit without cultivating the tree, and to share the
advantages of victory without partaking the danger of the battle. In
later ages, the conviction of the danger to which virtue is exposed
while the mind continues open to the influence of riches, has determined
many to vows of perpetual poverty; they have suppressed desire by
cutting off the possibility of gratification, and secured their peace by
destroying the enemy whom they had no hope of reducing to quiet
subjection. But, by debarring themselves from evil, they have rescinded
many opportunities of good; they have too often sunk into inactivity and
uselessness; and, though they have forborne to injure society, have not
fully paid their contributions to its happiness.
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