Blessed Are the Limited

Chesterton on property:

Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of Heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small. 

I am well aware that the word "property" has  been defiled in our time by the corrupton of the great capitalists. One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obvioulsy they are the enemies of property; because they are the enemies of their own limitations. They do not want their own land; but other people's. When they remove their neighbour's landmark, they also remove their own. A man who loves a little triangular filed ought to love it because it is triangular ; anyone who destroys the shape, by giving him more land, is a thief who has stolen a triangle. A man with the true poetry of possession wishes to see the wall where his garden meets Smith's garden; the hedge where his farm touches Brown's. He cannot see the shape of his own land unless he sees the edges of his neighbour's. It is the negation of property that the Duke of Sutherland should have all the farms in one estate; just as it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem (What's Wrong with the World).