For such a procedure is requisite, in conformity with the
postulate of reason, in order to subject to my proper use a thing
which would otherwise be practically annihilated, as regards all
proper use of it.
CH2
FIRST PART. PRIVATE RIGHT.
The System of those Laws Which Require No External Promulgation.
CHAPTER II. The Mode of Acquiring Anything External.
10. The General Principle of External Acquisition.
I acquire a thing when I act (efficio) so that it becomes mine. An
external thing is originally mine when it is mine even without the
intervention of a juridical act. An acquisition is original and
primary when it is not derived from what another had already made
his own.
There is nothing external that is as such originally mine; but
anything external may be originally acquired when it is an object that
no other person has yet made his. A state in which the mine and
thine are in common cannot be conceived as having been at any time
original. Such a state of things would have to be acquired by an
external juridical act, although there may be an original and common
possession of an external object. Even if we think hypothetically of a
state in which the mine and thine would be originally in common as a
communio mei et tui originaria, it would still have to be
distinguished from a primeval communion (communio primaeva) with
things in common, sometimes supposed to be founded in the first period
of the relations of right among men, and which could not be regarded
as based upon principles like the former, but only upon history.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54