"Aren't you glad to have such a castle all for your own--to do with what you like, Arkie? You know you could pull it all to pieces if you liked!" [said Davie.]
"Would it be less mine," said Arctura, "if I was not at liberty to pull it all to pieces? And would it be more mine when I had pulled it to pieces, Davie?" [said lady Arctura.]
Donal was coming round the side of the [chimney] stack, and heard what she said. It pleased him, for it was not a little in his own style.
"What makes a thing your own, do you think, Davie?" she went on.
"To be able to do with it what you like," replied Davie.
"Whether that be good or bad?"
"Yes, I think so," answered Davie, doubtfully.
"Then I think you are quite wrong," she rejoined. "The moment you begin to use a thing wrong, that moment you make it less yours. I can't quite explain it, but that is how it looks to me."
She ceased, and after a moment Donal took up the question.
"Lady Arctura is quite right, Davie," he said. "The nature, that is the good of a thing, is that only by which it can be possessed. Any other possession is like slave-owning; it is not a righteous having. The right and the power to use it to its true purpose, and the using it so, are the conditions that make a thing ours. To have the right and the power, and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than anybody's. --Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was, while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of but for it:--which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have the more real possession of that picture? You could sell it away from yourself, and never know anything about it more; but you could not by all the power of a tyrant take it from your servant."
[Some time later]
"Mr. Grant," said Arctura..., "what do you take to be the duty of one inheriting a property? Ought a woman to get rid of it, or to attend to it herself?" [Lady Arctura was a heiress who currently let her uncle, formerly her guardian, run her estate without her interference.]
Donal thought a little.
"We must first settle the main duty of property," he said, "and that I am hardly prepared to do."
"Is there not a duty owing to your family?"
"There are a thousand duties owing to your family."
"I don't mean those you are living with merely, but those also who transmitted the property to you. This property belongs to my family rather than to me, and if I had had a brother it would have gone to him: should I not do better for the family by giving it up to the next heir? I am not disinterested in starting the question; possession and power are of no great importance in my eyes; they are hinderances to me."
"It seems to me," said Donal, "that the fact that you would not have succeded had there been a son, points to the fact of a disposer of events: you were sent into the world to take the property. If so, God expects you to perform the duties of it; they are not to be got rid of by throwing the thing aside, or giving them to another to do for you. If your family and not god were the real giver of the property, the question you put might arise; but I should hardly take interest enough in it to be capable of discussing it. I understand my duty to my sheep or cattle, to my master, to my father or mother, to my brother or sister, to my pupil Davie here; I owe my ancestors love and honour, and the keeping of their name unspotted, thought that duty is forestalled by a higher; but as to the property they leave behind them, over which they have no more power, and which now I trust they never think about, I do not see what obligation I can be under to them with regard to it, other than is comprised in the duty of the property itself."
"But a family is not merely those that are gone before; there are those that will come after!"
"The best thing for those to come after, is to receive the property with its duties performed, with the light of righteousness radiating from it."
"But what then do you call the duties of property?"
"In what does the property consist?"
"In land, to begin with."
"If the land were of no value, would the possession of it involve duties?"
"I suppose not."
"In what does the value of the land consist?"
Lady Arctura did not attempt an answer to the question, and Donal, after a little pause, resumed.
"If you valued things as the world values them, I should not care to put the question; but I fear you may have some lingering notion that, though God's way is the true way, the world's way must not be disregarded. One thing, however, is certain--that nothing that is against God's way can be true. The value of property consists only in its being means, ground, or material to work his will withal. There is no success in the universe but in his will being done."