In the treatment of my topic, I shall begin with the human person and go on from there to the question of ownership of material goods. This will be done in the deep conviction, which accords also with the best philosophical tradition of 2,000 years, that the institution of ownership must be theoretically derived and must take its practical cues from the human person, and not vice versa. If there is one supreme characteristic of our modern civilization in this regard, it is the fact that we have turned this matter quite around. Our civilization has given the supreme position to ownership, whether public or private, and has made the person quite subservient in practical life to this supposedly highest of all individual and social values. By modern civilization I mean the general dominant trend of human events in our Western world during the past four centuries or so, which was in some regards a trend away from the general Christian tradition of thought and life that existed progressively for much over a thousand years before what is technically known as the modern era of history began.