PROPERTY IN THE ALASKAN SEAL HERD. 83 



another part; or else entire absorption in one class of work, coupled 

 with a steady reliance that another class of work, of equal importance 

 to himself, is the object of corresponding exertion on the part of others. 

 In all these cases the mere fact of physical holding or possession, in 

 the narrowest sense, is no test whatever of the interests or claims of 

 persons in the things by which they are surrounded. 1 



1 The Science of the Law, hy Sheldon Amos, Lond., 1881, pp. 148, et seq. A dis- 

 tinguished French jurist thus traces the development of the conception of ownership 

 as distinct from possession : 



"Sec. 64. If the laws attached to property and those which are derived from it are 

 now very extensive it was not thus originally. Property was confounded with pos- 

 session and it was lost with it. 



" Before the foundation of the civil state the earth was no one's ; the fruits belonged 

 to the first occupant. The men that were distributed over the globe lived in a state 

 which the writers who have written on natural law have termed negative com- 

 munity, in distinction from positive community, in which several associates held in 

 common ownership an indivisible thing belonging to each in a certain portion. 



"Negative community, on the contrary, consisted in that the thing common to all 

 did nor, belong more to each one of them in particular than to the other, and in that 

 no one could prevent another from taking that which he considered proper to make 

 use of in his needs. 



"This doctrinal expression of negative community signifies nothing else but the 

 primitive and determinate right (droit) that all men had originally to make use of 

 the goods which their earth offered, as long as no one had yet taken possession of 

 them. 



" Sec. 65. It is this which is termed the right of the first occupant. He who first 

 possesses himself of a thing acquires over it a kind of transient ownership, or, to 

 speak more exactly, a right of preference which others should respect. They should 

 leave that thing to him while he possesses it; but, after he had ceased to make use of 

 it or to occupy it, another in his turn might make use of it or occupy it. 



" If the older possessor had invoked his past possession as a right of preference still 

 existing, the younger could be able to answer by his present possession; and when, 

 furthermore, rights are equal on both sides, it is just and natural that the actual 

 possessor should be preferred; for to take possession away from him there should be 

 a stronger right thau his own. 



"Thus the right of occupation is a title of legitimate preference founded on nature. 



" Sec. 66. The existence of this primitive state of negative community is incontest- 

 ible; prcofs of the same are found in Genesis, the most ancient of all books, and the 

 most venerable even when considering it only from an historical point of view.* The 

 poets, in their picturing of the Golden Age, have left us ornamented works, but in- 

 accurate ones. The ancient historians have transmitted to us tradition; aud, finally 

 examples thereof were found again in the habits of the savage tribes of America 

 when that continent was discovered. 



" Sec. 67. Thus, following a comparison of Cicero, the world was like a vast theater 

 belonging to the public, and of which each seat became the property of the first oc- 

 cupant as long as it suited him to remain therein, but which he could not prevent 

 another from occupying after he had left it. 



"Sec. 68. But how could this preference acquired by occupation have become a sta- 

 ble and permanent ownership, that would continue to subsist aud could be reclaimed 

 after the first occupant had ceased to be in possession? 



"It was agriculture that gave birth to the idea of and made felt its necessity for 

 permanent property. In measure as the number of men increased, it became more 



* Genesis, I, 28 aud 23. 



