G40 CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 



them to reduce that thing under their owu dominion, if possible, in 

 order to restrict the use of it, by such precautious as prudence might 

 dictate to them. 



Fiore. Nouveau droit international public, traduit par Pradier- 

 Fodere, vol. I, ch. ii, ]». .'570, ed. L868. 



Now that we have determined the objects over which one can exercise 

 the right of international ownership, it is necessary to establish the 

 means by which we can acquire the ownership of them. It is certain 

 that the right of ownership exists independently of all actual posses- 

 sion, but the effective ownership presupposes a detention and an actual 

 occupation of the thing which forms the object thereof. This is why it 

 is deiined as the right of possessing a thing exclusively and of dispos 

 ing of it. In order that a thing may pass into the domain of an indi- 

 vidual, whether it be physical or moral matters not, two conditions are 

 required; that the object should be capable of* being attributed to the 

 exclusive use of one individual, and that it should pass into his posses- 

 sion for his exclusive use. When the individual occupies the thing, 

 and engraves upon it by his labour the seal of his personality, the 

 thing remains bound to the person, so that between the individual and 

 the thing an indestructible legal bond is formed. 



Henry Ahrens, Course of natural Law, or of the philosophy of law, 

 vol. II, title 2, par. 67, p. 171-176. Leipzig, 1X7.~>. Ed. 7. 



In the first period of mankind, governed more by instinct than by the 

 light of conscience, the two constitutive elements of property were not 

 yet distinguished from each other: instinct moved men to seek in com- 

 mon the necessary means to satisfy their first needs. But as men, at 

 that period, in the feeling of their weakness and their dependence, were 

 more strongly subject to the influences of the superior forces of nature, 

 of ( J-OD, and of social order, they must also have traced back to a higher 

 source all that which the earth produces to satisfy their wants. The 

 goods of the earth, therefore, were looked upon as a gift from God to 

 all for common enjoyment. The idea of individual property could not 

 suggest itself to the mind so long as spontaneity (spontaniete) of action, 

 awakened by labor, was too feeble to engender the feeling of personal 

 individuality. Indivisible community of property in the various fam- 

 ily and tribal groups, etc., founded upon a religious thought, should 

 have been the law (loi) of this first period of the world, the existence 

 of which has been testified to by the principles of philosophy and by 

 the traces which are found in" the most ancient documents of history. 



But by degrees, as spontaneity acquired more energy, that individual 

 [personnel) labor became more intense, general (common) ties began to 

 shrink; each one commenced to separate from the whole and to direct 

 his sight and his sentiments on the parts which lay nearest him; he 

 allied himself more intimately with the family or the tribe in the midst 

 of which he lived; thus his relations gained in intensity what they lost 

 in extensiveness. Then the epoch dawned when opposition between 

 the whole and the portions of a people, and even of peoples among one 

 another, became more and more pronounced, and revealed in a succes- 

 sion of various periods the struggle of the different social and national 

 elements. This protracted and painful epoch of history presents great 

 strides in the development of property. Men, emerging from their first 

 period and still imbued with the views and the sentiments which had 

 predominated therein, had first to gradually make a distinction between 



