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 emphasiz- 
ing the fact that property always constitutes an inter- 
est 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 ar- 
ticles 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, some- 
times transversely, sometimes longitudinally, and some- 
times 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 ten- 
ant’s right in the dwelling he occupies is sharply distin- 
guished from the right of the owner. Yet the law recog- 
nizes a leasehold as an estate in the land, and when the