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"If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others for exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but
the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone,
and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. "Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesss the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. |
| "That
ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral
and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density
at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
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