CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 627 



that is to say, that first development of ownership, which is successively 

 extended by occupation and by the clearing and cultivation of new 

 land, which development is always proportionate to the numerical 

 development of the human race. 



Von Adolf Lasson, System der Rechtsphilosophie. Berlin, 1882. 



Section 10 (page 003.) — The formation of property in land is very 

 closely connected with the economic development of man. A condition 

 of landed property, properly so called, in general, is the stationary 

 character of men. As long as cattle-raising is mainly carried on, laud 

 will be held mainly in common, and may continue to be so held as long 

 as agriculture is carried on by means of the simplest processes. When 

 everything depends upon the care, prudence, industry, and the appli- 

 ances for tilling tlie soil of each individual, the possession of land in 

 common is opposed to commou sense, and is impossible. Increasing 

 density of population, improved methods of cultivation, development 

 of free property in movable possessions, the use of money, trade and 

 industry, compel property in land to assume, with more or less uni- 

 formity, those forms of property which have become customary for 

 movable possessions. There is historical progress everywhere, as a 

 consequence, from collective to individual property, from public to 

 private economy. Nevertheless, we must not overlook the fact that in 

 individual matters, and for special objects of property, the transition 

 from private to public management may become necessary, and that 

 there are objects which are, in general, necessary, or which may be 

 better left to the ownership and management of the State and of the 

 community. The formation of jurisprudence (Rechtsbildung) has, in this 

 field, motives which are radically different, and lead to different results, 

 for constantly reconciling what is just and what is expedient, what is 

 conducive to private welfare and to the prosperity of the whole, the 

 interest of personal liberty and economic interest. It is true that what 

 is just and what is beneficial agree, as a general thing, here also. It is 

 most desirable, in both points of view, that every one should have an 

 unrestricted right of property in that which he independently produces, 

 that only that should be, in common property, the object of common 

 management, which, according to regulation and established precept, 

 may be worked without any great interference with individual selection 

 and free enterprise; or that which (such as public roads, or property 

 in mines and forests) cannot, in the interest of future generations, as 

 well as of those now living, be unconditionally exposed to the influence 

 of private discretion. That a person who does not manage the object 

 himself should be its owner, is not to be avoided as an exception, but 

 is pernicious when taken as a rule. The apparent economic advantages 

 of management in common: the systematization and organization of 

 labor, in which the opposition of those forces which should co-operate 

 with each other is avoided; the regulation of both production and con- 

 sumption by a controlling will: all this, in the system of separate man- 

 agement, is fully counterbalanced by the increased power of personal 

 initiative, by the multiplied motives for labor, by the strong impulses 

 for the development of all gifts and capacities of personality, by the 

 more severe compulsion and the greater interest in one's own property, 

 that a man has himself earned, himself possesses, himself enjoys, and 

 that he may transfer to his family, and leave it to them at his death. 

 That the right of property, even in immovable things, be endowed with 

 very rich contents, that requires the idea of personality, which has, in 



