CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 641 



the property of the family or of the tribe, and the ground or earth which 

 God liad given to all. The division of the common earth began, less 

 in regard to property (propriete) than in regard to usage, enjoyment or 

 usufruct. These ideas were to be modified in nomadic, pastoral and 

 agricultural life to which men devoted themselves. The notions of 

 usage and of enjoyment were transformed into the most settled idea of 

 property, when families and tribes began fastening to the soil after 

 relinquishing nomadic life, and claiming from the earth by agricultural 

 labor the means of livelihood which until then they had found on its 

 surface. But albeit the idea of property developed itself naturally 

 through the labor of appropriation of the earth, the thought of indi- 

 vidual property was to remain still a long time foreign to the mind. 

 Each one considered himself, first of all, as a member of a family or of 

 a tribe, and, as labor was performed in common, the products were also 

 distributed by family or by tribe. It is, hence, an error to believe that 

 property should have begun by individual occupation or by personal 

 labor. The institution of property, like that of society, was not created 

 by individual aggregation, atomistically, but by the constitution of 

 collective property in the heart of the collective being, superior of the 

 family, of the gent or of the tribe. 



This period of family property and of collective property of the tribe 

 has been met with among all nations and has endured centuries. But 

 a final step remained to be effected in the trend of appropriation. The 

 individual was to conclude by attributing to himself a right to the 

 earth, at first still conceding collective property, the sovereign right of 

 concession and recovery to the family, to the tribe, and to the nation 

 of which he formed a part, but continually limiting the rights of this 

 superior authority, and more and more securing for himself exclusive 

 rights over that portion of which he had taken possession. When the 

 individual principle of property thus had taken root in society, the 

 social principle seemed destined to disappear forever. But at the very 

 moment when the ancient world fell to pieces, where egotism had per- 

 vaded everything, the social element was consecrated anew by becoming 

 inspired from a loftier source, which was to give to individuality itself 

 its true principle. Christianity reestablished the religions and social 

 principle of property, at first by numerous examples of community of 

 goods; and afterwards by allying itself to the Germanic spirit by a 

 greater organization of properties, which were given an hierarchical 

 basis (Merarchisees entre dies). This organization, however, subordi- 

 nating and claiming human personality to properties, was to be over- 

 thrown when the principle of personality reconsecrated by philosophy 

 and religions reform, found especially through the support of Boinan 

 law its application to the institution of property, where it in turn was 

 pushed to extreme deductions. 



Masse, Le Droit Commercial, tit. II, liv. IV, ch. i, par. 1394. 3rd ed. 



There is this difference between possession and ownership: that the 

 possession presupposes a detention or an actual occupation of the thing 

 which is the object, while ownership exists independently of all actual 

 possession. It presupposes only that in this sense the things which 

 cannot be detained or occupied are not susceptible of ownership. 



All ownership comes from work, to assist in which man has occupied 

 and detained the things susceptible of occupation and detention, and 

 has appropriated them to himself. 



Ownership as well as work is of the natural law. The civil law guar- 

 antees and protects the ownership, but it does not create. 



41 B S 



