Sc. 8] PROPERTY . 33
that “credit” forms an exception, for credit is a present
right to a future payment. But it is impossible to have a
right to any future wealth which is not also a right to some
present wealth as a means of securing that future wealth.
The right to next year’s fruit is a right to or in present fruit
trees. The right to next year’s wheat is a right to or in the
present farm, farmer, and farm implements. The right to
receive a future chair or table yet unmade is the right to or
in the present person, tools, and other wealth of the car-
penter, which are the means by which that chair or table
is to be secured. To own a note falling due next year is
a part right in the person and other “assets” of the prom-
isor, and ceases to have value as soon as he ceases to be
“good for it.” The courts do not restrict a debtor in the
disposition of his possessions prior to the maturity of a note.
He may elect to squander these, and even to commit sui-
cide. But such destruction of the present means of pro-
viding for future payment carries with it the impairment
or destruction of the value of the note. No future com-
modities or benefits whatever can be owned in the present
except as claims on certain requisites of their production
now in existence. We cannot own next year’s goods sus-
pended in mid air, as it were, any more than we can fly a
kite without a cord. There must always be some present
means of controlling the future. Thus, credit, like every
other property right, is a part right upon existing wealth.
And not only is every right to a future benefit a claim
on present wealth, but conversely, every claim on present
wealth is a right to a future benefit. Owning rights to
“futures” is therefore not an exceptional case, but the gen-
eral one. As we have seen, all wealth is merely existing
means toward future services, and all property, merely pres-
ent rights to some of those future services. It is only
through the future services that wealth and property are
bound together at all. The sequence of ideas is, first, pres-
ent wealth ; second, future services; third, present rights to
D
