It depends not only on the fact, but also on his consciousness of the fact, that he is a citizen of a certain state or country, though with most of its inhabitants he will never exchange a word; or that he is a member of a certain church; or that, being a man and not a monkey, his destiny is identified with that of the human species.

But, so far as his enjoyment of private wealth is concerned, each man as a rule, though to this there are individual exceptions, enjoys it mainly through the life of his own _de facto_ class--the people whose manners and habits are more or less similar to his own, because they result from the possession of more or less similar means.

He is, therefore, not interested in the permanence of his own wealth only.

He is equally interested in the permanence of the wealth of a body of men, the life of which must, like that of all corporations, be continuous.
There is in this fact much more than at first appears.

Let us go back to a point insisted on in the previous chapter.