Certain men, having leased a vineyard (Matthew 21, 33 to 42), imagined that they were its masters. So each one of us imagines that life is his personal property, and that he has a right to enjoy it in such a way as may seem to him good  without recognizing any obligations to others. And the inevitable consequence of this delusion is a series of foolish and cruel action followed by exclusion from life. And as the husbandmen killed the servants and at last the son of the householder, thinking that the more cruel they were, the better able they would be to gain their ends, so we imagine that we shall obtain the greatest security by means of violence.

The true life is the life which adds something to the store of happiness accumulated by past generations, which increases this heritage in the present, and hands it down to the future.