Immobility

“ It was the moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose. ”

“ In our search for conditions which could have brought the need for suppression, let us continue to deal with the instinctive reactions to danger. One of these clearly brings out the need for suppression. The reaction to danger by means of immobility is one which would obviously be impossible if the inhibition which led the animal to become motionless were complicated by the presence of impulses to movement, and especially to those pronounced and violent movements which make up the other great fundamental reaction -- that of flight. ”

“ Uncertainty of Temporal Possessions—Do you not know that the possession of your property is like a shadow, or the dew of the morning before the noonday sun, that you cannot have any assurance of its control for a single moment! It is the unseen hand of Providence that controls it. ”

“ I beg your pardon,—I said;—all I meant was, that men, as temporary occupants of a permanent abode called human life, which is improved or injured by occupancy, according to the style of tenant, have a natural dislike to those who, if they live the life of the race as well as of the individual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the abode spoken of, which is to be occupied by countless future generations. This is the final cause of the underlying brute instinct which we have in common with the herds. ”

“ The description of an Object as ‘external to me’ may signify either that it is merely 'different and distinct from me as a Subject,' or that it is also 'a thing placed outside of me, and to be found elsewhere in space or time.' Taken in the first sense, the term Possession signifies 'rational Possession;' and, in the second sense, it must mean 'Empirical Possession.' A rational or intelligible Possession, if such be possible, is Possession viewed apart from physical holding or detention (detentio) . ”

“ To both, possession—private and personal possession—from the child's first toy, or the tiny garden where it sows its passionately watched seeds, to the great business or the great estate, is one of the first and chiefest elements of human training, not to be escaped by human effort, or only at such a cost of impoverishment and disaster that mankind would but take the step—supposing it conceivable that it should take it—to retrace it instantly. ”

“ Occupancy is the advised assumption of physical possession; and the notion that an act of this description confers a title to "res nullius," so far from being characteristic of very early societies, is in all probability the growth of a refined jurisprudence and of a settled condition of the laws. ”

“ Who does not know how terrible are those preparations for house-moving;—how infinite in number are the articles which must be packed, how inexpressibly uncomfortable is the period of packing, and how poor and tawdry is the aspect of one's belongings while they are thus in a state of dislocation? ”

“ Who has not either seen or heard of some house, shut up and uninhabitable, fallen into decay, and looking dusty and dreary, from which, at midnight, strange sounds have been heard to issue—aerial knockings—the rattling of chains, and the groaning of perturbed spirits?—a house that people have thought it unsafe to pass after dark, and which has remained for years without a tenant, and which no tenant would occupy, even were he paid to do so? ”

“ Which of us could say he would never turn a key in the lock of an empty house? How many casual little twists of the wrist of Fate stand between the best of us and the step down from the threshold of a broken home? ”

“ I was born upon an estate where the life tenure was the custom, and I found that in many cases men put their children's lives on a house, and some day or other they found themselves deprived of both children and property. In other cases the lives of sailors were on, and after a time there was great doubt whether the lives were in existence or not, and generally a great deal of misery was the result of this life tenure. ”

“ If I move from one house to another, the mere act of going out of one does not solve the why that I lived in one, or will in another. I may perceive that one is better adapted to my wants, but the moving into it does not tell me ‘why?’ I, as the tenant, know already the why, and perhaps if I open the windows of my house, the house itself may become pervaded with the knowledge. But it is ‘I’ who do the act, not Death. Death closes my windows and opens the door. I close my door to Death and open my window to Wisdom—perhaps in a new house, quite likely in one which has had another occupant. ”

“ If this is so, and if it is considered for other reasons undesirable to satisfy the property instinct by the possession, say, of slaves or of freehold land, one supposes that a good deal of the feeling of property may in the future be enjoyed even by persons in whom the instinct is abnormally strong, through the collection of shells or of picture postcards. ”

“ The people, too, seemed to carry about with them a deal of personal property, as if they liked to show that they had it, a thing we never think of, and those who dwelt in the houses massed together in such ugly confusion appeared to have filled their windows with all they possessed. ”

“ To all who pursue the inquiries which are the subject of this volume Occupancy is pre-eminently interesting on the score of the service it has been made to perform for speculative jurisprudence, in furnishing a supposed explanation of the origin of private property. It was once universally believed that the proceeding implied in Occupancy was identical with the process by which the earth and its fruits, which were at first in common, became the allowed property of individuals. ”

“ The “homestead instinct” of our primitive forefathers formed the first, and perhaps the most potent, stimulus to the acquisition of personal property. There is a period in life when the desire for the possession of a private domicile asserts itself with the power almost of a vital passion ”

“ Fatality enters your rooms while your landlady's back is turned; you come home and find it in possession bearing a man's name, clothed in flesh--wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots--lounging against the stove. ”

“ Into this whirlpool of infatuation I cast my own estate, the property of my wife, the money of many others. I am forty-two to-day, with old age staring me in the face, and I am homeless as a dog that has lost his master by night. ”

“ Theory has made them its favourite food, and has enabled them to exercise the most serious influence on practice.
It will be necessary for us to attend to one only among these "natural modes of acquisition," Occupatio or Occupancy. Occupancy is the advisedly taking possession of that which at the moment is the property of no man, with the view (adds the technical definition) of acquiring property in it for yourself. The objects which the Roman lawyers called res nullius—things which have not or have never had an owner—can only be ascertained by enumerating them. ”

“ With poppy for my everlasting flower;
I long not now for that dim cubicle
Of earth to which my lease will not expire,
Where he who comes a tenant there may dwell
Without a thought of famine, flood, or fire. ”

“ The kind and frequency of the acts of occupancy necessary to constitute a continuous possession depend somewhat on the condition of the property, and the uses to which it is adapted in reference to the circumstances and situation of the possessor, and partly on his intention. ”

“ The same is the case with property in buildings, clothes, wares; with property in the land; with property in money. Every imaginary property calls forth in me a non-corresponding want which cannot always be gratified, and deprives me of the possibility of acquiring for my true and sure property—my own body—that information, that skill, those habits, improvements, which I might have acquired. ”

“ Wheresoever man goes, Rat follows, or accompanies him. Town or country are equally agreeable to him. He enters upon your house as a tenant at will, (his own, not yours,) works out for himself a covered way in your walls, ascends by it from one story to another, and leaving you the larger apartments, takes possession of the space between floor and ceiling, as an entresol for himself. ”

“ Moreover, property, which has been well compared to snow,—"if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,"—is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the spirit, experience in profounder laws. ”

“ Possession (here the author follows Paulus and Labeo in the Digest) is as when one’s feet are set upon a thing, when body naturally rests on body. To acquire possession is to begin to possess. Herein one considers both the fact and the right. The fact arises through ourselves or our representative. ”

“ The witness when pressed admitted, "We all have property"—all we who have made a vow of poverty, or an abnegation of property—but the way we manage it is this: "We have what is called a 'peculium,' which is a separate thing from the vow of poverty." ”

“ But now, I am glad to think, what is already in one’s possession governs in some measure what alterations are to be made, and as fate never yet was so propitious as to put one down straight from one house into another which was exactly decorated to our taste, we may be quite sure that there are many things to do to any place to which we may contemplate moving ”

“ Personality swallowed up in the sordid idea of property! Manhood lost in chattelhood!
After the valuation, then came the division. This was an hour of high excitement and distressing anxiety. Our destiny was now to be fixed for life, and we had no more voice in the decision of the question, than the oxen and cows that stood chewing at the haymow. ”

“ I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal. “They're beginning to suspect already that something's wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles.” ”

“ The very distinction made in legal terminology between real and personal property is but the survival of a primitive distinction between what was originally looked upon as common property and what from its nature was always considered the peculiar property of the individual. ”

“ From places such as these people are always moving, whether from an inborn restlessness or a desire to escape their creditors, I cannot say; but one day you see them toiling up and down stairs with the oddest, and most intimate, household and personal belongings clasped in their arms. ”

“ Why have we so many lawyers, but to secure our property? why so many formalities, but to secure our property? Not less than one hundred thousand families live in opulence, elegance, and ease, merely by securing our property. ”

“ You occupy the thing that belongs to no one. By accession you acquire possession in two ways. Thus the increment may be possessed, as the fruit of thy handmaid; or the accession consists in the union with a larger thing which is yours, as when alluvium is deposited on your land. Again possession is transferred to you ”

“ The adjectival expression of the idea of possession.—All the world over, a property is a possession; and persons, at least, may be said to be the owners of their attributes. Whatever may be the nature of words like mine and thine, the adjectival character of their Latin equivalents, meus and tuus, is undoubted.
The ideas of partition and possession merge into one another.—A man's spade is the possession of a man; a man's hand is the part of a man. ”

“ HAving been tenant long to a rich Lord,
⁠Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
⁠And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancell th' old.
In heaven at his manour I him sought:
⁠They told me there, that he was lately gone
⁠About some land, which he had deerly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight return'd, and knowing his great birth,
⁠Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
⁠In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
⁠Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
⁠Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, & died. ”

“ In following their purpose, they have recognized at once that property is a detail. Even in its most beautiful form it must be removed if it stands in the way of their plans which must be carried through. ”

“ I have offered emancipation to one or two who have grown old, and they have refused it, and now remain as heirlooms on the estate, provided with everything, and doing little or no work, if they please. ”

“ The inexperienced in such matters may be surprised, and if they have hearts they may be grieved, to learn that the fire-proof storage of the furniture of the average house would equal the rent of a very comfortable domicile in a small town, or a farm by which a family's living can be earned, with a decent dwelling in which it can be sheltered. ”

“ Peculiar forms of assignments In certain cases we shall find a sort of hypothecation of property, as when it is assigned as security, but not given up. The possession is not free, but it is not alienated. ”

“ I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to the reign of reason. ”