IN SWITZERLAND 51
capacities of every generation are always in balance with its total
desires, or needs," he wrote. But, he added, the desires and capaci
ties of individuals are unequal, and no individual in a civilized state
can satisfy his desires completely through his own capacities alone,
but must trade his capacities for those of others. It was the function
of the social organization to bring these qualities and capacities
into harmony again. Furthermore, because desires developed with
progress, harmony could be assured only by balancing mankind's
total capacities to produce and to consume.
Weitling traced the evolution of society from a simple pastoral
order to his own time, demonstrating the emergence of modern
concepts of movable and immovable property. Like Proudhon,
he regarded private property as the curse of mankind. He de
scribed how, as primitive man began to count his herds and to
make special provision for his own family, he became aware of
mine and thine. As long as Nature provided abundantly, however,
the distinction did not prove serious or alarming: as yet there were
no fixed boundaries and men could go where they pleased and use
what they wanted and needed. But eventually the time came when
men tilled the soil, coveted the best available land, and marked it
off as their own. While population expanded, the amount of avail
able land did not change; and thus there emerged the "loveless,
fratricidal concept" of property, and men began to quarrel and
fight, to compete for pasturage and the bounties of Nature, and to
employ other men as laborers to help reap what they had not
sowed. Land and its products increased in value; laws of inherit
ance were invented; and society divided into masters and slaves,
workers and drones.
It is not necessary to pursue the historical argument through all
its steps. Presently, Weitling arrived at the point where the viola
tion of Nature's laws led to wars. The skillful use of weapons be
came a trade or a profession; tribes united into peoples, and
boundaries became the "property" of nations. Peoples developed
their own languages and began to speak of such "sweet delusions"
and utter such "sanctified lies" as "fatherland," a concept that had