Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/584

572 be the principles of abstract right to which individuals may appeal, ownership, as an institution, is a gift of society to its individual members, i. e., ownership, whether absolute or limited, is possible only as men in masses agree to recognize and enforce ethical claims of single or associated individuals.

This agreement is entered into on the part of society not because multitudes of men think that single persons are more important, and deserve more consideration than the many, but because societies instinctively perceive that the interests of the many can be conserved only by safeguarding the interests of the units. The many combine to establish and maintain what are held to be the just claims of individual persons, because the good of the many is thereby assured. Thus it comes about that the thing which is supposed to belong by right to the individual is guaranteed to him in all civilized societies by the agreement of the whole community.

When, however, it becomes apparent that the enforcement of these claims to ownership is harmfully affecting the whole society, there sooner or later arises suspicion that somehow or other mistakes have been committed in men's judgment as to what constitutes individual rights. Thus men have held ownership of certain allegiance and service on the part of others; they have had legal ownership of right to control the movements of others from place to place; of right to give or withhold consent to the marriage of certain parties; men have had ownership of right to exercise certain magistracies, to confer certain "livings," to be exempt from certain pecuniary dues, etc. In the earlier history of these possessions the claims under them have been regarded as applications of the principle, to every man his own—suum cuique. It has dawned upon men later that these things were no man's own, and, in the nature of the case, they cannot be, because they deprive other men of a part of their own. Hence there have been striking changes in conceptions of what may be owned, and of what constitutes just as contrasted with legal title to ownership. Back of each separate doctrine and policy with reference to ownership has been the vague tacit