or An Essay on the Right of Authors and Inventors to a Perpetual Property in their IdeasSECTION XI. Objection Eleventh. It is said that ideas are unlike corporeal commodities in this respect, namely, that a corporeal commodity cannot be completely and fully possessed and used by two persons at once, without collision between them; and that it must therefore necessarily be recognized as the property of one only, in order that it may be possessed and used in peace; but that an idea may be completely and fully possessed and used by many persons at once, without collision with each other; and therefore no one should be allowed to monopolize it. This objection lays wholly out of consideration the fact, that the idea has been produced by one man's labor, and not by the labor of all men; as if that were a fact of no legal consequence; whereas it is of decisive consequence; else there can be no exclusive right of property, in any of the productions or acquisitions of human labor. If one commodity, the product of...