CHAPTER XV. 

 PEOPERTY. 



5SC. The fact referred to in 292, that even intelligent 

 animals display a sense of proprietorship, negatives the belief 

 propounded by some, that individual property was not recog 

 nized by primitive men. When we see the claim to exclusive 

 possession understood by a dog, so that he fights in defence 

 of his master s clothes if left in charge of them, it becomes 

 impossible to suppose that even in their lowest state men 

 were devoid of those ideas and emotions which initiate private 

 ownership. All that may be fairly assumed is that these 

 ideas and sentiments were at first .Lss developed than they 

 have since become. 



It is true that in some extremely rude hordes, rights of pro 

 perty are but little respected. Lichtenstein tells us that 

 among the Bushmen, &quot; the weaker, if he would preserve his 

 own life, is obliged to resign to the stronger, his weapons, his 

 wife, and even his children;&quot; and there are some degraded 

 North American tribes in which there is no check on the 

 more powerful who choose to take from the less powerful : 

 their acts are held to be legitimized by success. But absence 

 of the idea of property, and the accompanying sentiment, 

 is no more implied by these forcible appropriations than it 

 is implied by the forcible appropriation which a bigger 

 schoolboy makes of the toy belonging to a less. li 



is also true that even where force is not used, individual 



