He said, "What is a
book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be
no property in it."
I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that
had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.
He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who
travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see
nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party
who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To
him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on
that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has
another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey
and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and
buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.
That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to
Cairo Railway would be built.
Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an
idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is
another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which
represent ideas.
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