John Locke. (№ 433717)

He who feeds on acorns picked up under an oak tree, or apples plucked from trees in the forest, undoubtedly made them his own. No one can deny that this food belongs to him. I ask, when did they start to be his? when did he digest them? or when did you eat? or when did you cook? or when did you bring them home? or when did he pick them up? And it is quite clear that if they did not belong to him at the moment when he collected them, then they will no longer be able to belong to him due to anything. His work created a distinction between them and the general; he added to them something beyond what nature, the common mother of all, had created, and thus they became his private right. And who can say that he had no right to these acorns or apples, which he thus appropriated, since he did not have the consent of all mankind to make them his own? Was it a theft to take for oneself in this way what belonged to all together? If such consent were necessary, then the person would die of hunger, despite the abundance that God gave him. We see in cases of common ownership, which remains such by contract, that it is the withdrawal of a part of what is common, and its withdrawal from the state in which nature left it, that initiates property, without which everything common is not useful. And the withdrawal of one or the other part does not depend on the clearly expressed consent of all joint owners. Thus, the grass that my horse nibbled, the sod that my servant cut, and the ore that I mined in any place where I have in common with others, become my property without the prescription or consent of anyone. The labor that was mine, bringing them out of the state of common possession in which they were, established my ownership of them.