them. The habitual appropriation and consumption of certain
slight personal effects goes on without raising the question of
ownership; that is to say, the question of a conventional,
equitable claim to extraneous things.

The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of
culture, apparently with the seizure of female captives. The
original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems
to have been their usefulness as trophies. The practice of
seizing women from the enemy as trophies, gave rise to a form of
ownership-marriage, resulting in a household with a male head.
This was followed by an extension of slavery to other captives
and inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of
ownership-marriage to other women than those seized from the
enemy. The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a
predatory life, therefore, has been on the one hand a form of
marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand the custom of
ownership. The two institutions are not distinguishable in the
initial phase of their development; both arise from the desire of
the successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting
some durable result of their exploits. Both also minister to that
propensity for mastery which pervades all predatory communities.
From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends
itself to include the products of their industry, and so there
arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.

In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
installed. And although in the latest stages of the development,
the serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the
most obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no