The Finest Things in the World

"The best things in the world are the things we do not own..."

Who among men claims to own the beauties of nature? Or to own anything that rivals in beauty the blue dome studded with planets and stars, lit by the rays of the sun or adorned with the ornaments of the clouds? Who claims ownership of the wide sea that awes us with its raging and delights us with its calm? And the mountains that trace their domes high in the sky, turban their heads with snow, and wrap their flanks in a sash of greenery and blossom — who can claim to own them, or forbid all mankind to enjoy their beauty?

To whom belong the tall trees with their spreading shade, the caves wondrous in their formation, the gushing waterfalls, the dunes and the oases, the meadows and the forests? The twittering birds, the colored insects, the grasses and the boughs that sway with the breeze? All the enchanting beauty in nature, all the delight it gives to eye and heart — the whole of it is a beauty free to all, common to all human beings, who enjoy it without price, each valuing it according to his notion of beauty and his capacity for delicate sensibility and deep feeling.

The most beautiful things in nature are the property of all mankind. And the most beautiful things the human mind has produced and human intellect has built are likewise the property of all mankind; every individual partakes of them, and every individual shares in possessing them, in the measure of his readiness to understand and to savor.

The great works of art are gathered in the public museums spread through the corners of the world. And every human being can behold those masterpieces, moving among their rows, drinking his fill of their charms and contemplating their marvels as far as contemplation will carry him.

And the masterpieces of thought stored in thousands of books — from the Iliad to the dialogues of Plato, to the Epistle of Forgiveness and Dante's epic and Shakespeare's plays and the tales of Balzac and Dickens and Tagore — who can own them to the exclusion of the rest of mankind? They too are of the class of shared blessings and public goods, of the class of common property that no one can sequester or monopolize.

The most marvelous things in life are things we do not own. This is part of the wondrous wisdom of the Creator, and among the loftiest signs of nature, which sets before man — molded as he is upon greed — a parable of giving, and a lesson in the beneficent, bountiful life; for she distributes her best goods gratis, without price, and leaves what meager goods remain to individuals who spend their lives amassing them, expending for their sake the sweat of their brows and the blood of their hearts.

And man too — in whom the power of the Creator shines forth, and who stands at the summit of the wonders of the universe — is himself of the class of masterpieces that no one can own. His lofty production of science and art is the property of humanity. The lives of the great and their exploits are in the keeping of history, which broadcasts them to the world and immortalizes them in the bellies of pages. And human beauty, which delights the eye, is likewise a beauty common among men, whether living and embodied, or portrayed on an artist's canvas, or a phantom on the white screen. Like the beauties of the cosmos, it cannot be owned.

In olden times man owned his fellow human beings, by deed of sale or by a right conferred on him by conquest and captivity. The houses of rulers and men of means teemed with slaves and mamluks cast up by the fields of war and the slave markets. But the age of slavery has passed, and in the civilized lands there is no one who claims to own persons of his own kind.

And there were other kinds of bondage: when the king claimed to own his subjects, raising up whom he pleased among them and abasing whom he pleased; and when the man owned his wife and made of her an instrument in his hand; and the children were the property of the father, or of the parents, who surround them with an oppressive affection and a voracious care and display them before people like acquired merchandise and decorated dolls.

These too are kinds of bondage now on their way to extinction. The age of monarchies and thrones has passed. Woman has begun to disdain living with a man who crushes her personality, harnesses her to his ends, and does not treat her as equal treats equal. And the vanguard of the children's liberation from the ownership of parents has appeared — for children too are of the class of common treasures: the greatest possible number of the sons of their people, and of the world's leaders of thought, share in forming them

and guiding them. And it is among the greatest causes of family tragedies, this traditional stance which parents take toward their children when they claim to own them and try to impose upon them their whims and their opinions. For the free human being refuses to be anyone's property or to submit to anyone's dominion.

... And I came back to my own soul, asking it: what do you own? And I found that it owns, of this world's debris, a few garments that need cleaning every week or every day; and a few stacks of the fetid papers we call money, which oblige me to wash my hands whenever I touch them; and other things no different from the fetid papers in value or in appearance. So I thanked God that my possessions of these kinds are not many, and I marveled at those who devote their whole lives to gathering debris.