Excerpt from The Distribution of OwnershipBecause a man's wealth wnsisteth not in the abund ance of the things which he hath, because a man's spirit may be inwardly rich inversely to its outward security, he may be deferred to. Yet a man's periphery is usually measured in terms of economic ownership, which is the tangible measure of the social submission to his will. The power that arises from customary or affectionate allegiance may more often than not be found to be the long result of time - the residue of former contributions of goods and services to the ancestral personality. The ancestral periphery may not have been obliterated at the same time that its material contents were lost. At any rate the opposition between pride of birth and pride of wealth is modern.1 Homer's heroes and the heroes of the Nibelun gen Lied are noble and rich. In later Greek literature, pride of birth is identical with pride in seven wealthy ancestors in succession.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.