Sec. 3] CAPITAL SUMMATION 95

Such a result is sure to follow when we combine capital
accounts, provided we combine enough of them to supply,
for every liability item, its counterpart asset, and for
every asset which has one, its counterpart liability. The
assets which have no counterparts are what we have
called complete rights to wealth, or “fee simples’; those
which have them are the partial rights to wealth. The
reason is that every article of concrete wealth is to be regarded
 as owned in “fee simple” by some one, even if we
have to set up a fictitious person as dummy for that very
purpose. Hence every part right to that wealth will necessarily
 appear as a liability on the opposite side of that person’s
 account, and again as an asset on the account of some
other person. Thus, if two brothers own a farm in
equal shares, the farm as a whole is regarded as owned
by the partnership person called “Smith Brothers.” The
balance sheet of this fictitious person will show as assets
the farm and as liabilities the “undivided half-interest” of
each brother, and these same items enter the individual
accounts of the brothers as assets.
To follow out capital summations thus requires the inclusion
 of many fictitious persons, for it is often only the
fictitious persons who hold the complete rights to articles
of wealth. Locomotives and railway stations, for instance,
are owned by corporations, not individuals. In fact, these
fictitious persons — partnerships, corporations, trusts,
municipalities, associations, and the like — are formed
for the express purpose of holding large aggregations of
concrete wealth and parceling out its ownership among a
larger number of real persons.
If, then, we suppose balance sheets so constructed as to
include the whole world of real and fictitious persons,
with entries in them for every asset and liability, even
public parks and streets, household furniture, persons
themselves, and other possessions not ordinarily accounted
for in practice, it is evident that we shall obtain, by the