34 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Crar. II

these future services and therefore to the present wealth
which yields them. Property is thus always a right to the
chance of a future benefit. It always contemplates
both present and future time. We are here emphasizing
 the fact that property always constitutes an interest
 in the present means for acquiring it. Property in
nothing is nothing. This principle applies even to the
extreme case of good will. We saw that good will is the
ownership of a chance of continued patronage. The future
patronage may in some cases include that of persons yet
unborn; but the road to their patronage must lie through
the present generation. Existing persons and things must
always constitute the means for the attainment of any
benefits expected in the future.

§9
A fourth guide is that, in the case of partial ownership
of wealth, the aggregate of all the partial rights constitutes
the total ownership. We may picture to ourselves all articles
 of wealth as having attached to them streams of
services stretching out into the future. These services
are cut up among separate owners in different ways, sometimes
 transversely, sometimes longitudinally, and sometimes
 definite parts of them are separated out. The total
ownership of the wealth is simply the aggregate of the rights
to the entire stream of future services. It may, of course,
be true that the character and size of this stream of services
will differ according to the different methods by which
its ownership is parceled out. This fact, however, does
not invalidate the principle that the total ownership is
the combination of all the partial rights.
In common speech the minor rights to wealth are not
ordinarily dignified as rights of ownership. Thus, a tenant’s
 right in the dwelling he occupies is sharply distinguished
 from the right of the owner. Yet the law recognizes
 a leasehold as an estate in the land, and when the