The Influence Of Time On Possession

The title of first possession often becomes obscure through time.

It is impossible to determine many controversies arising from it.

In this case, long possession or prescription naturally takes place.

It gives a person a sufficient property in anything he enjoys.

The nature of human society does not admit of any great accuracy.

We can not always remount to the first origin of things to determine their present condition.

Any considerable span of time sets objects at such a distance, that they:

• lose their reality, and
• have as little influence on the mind, as if they never had existed.

A man’s title, that is clear and certain at present, will seem obscure and doubtful after 50 years, even if the facts it is founded on can be proven.

The same facts do not have the same influence after such a long interval of time.

This may be a convincing argument for our preceding doctrine on property and justice.

Possession during a long tract of time conveys a title to any object.

But as everything is produced in time, there is nothing real produced by time.

• It follows that property, being produced by time, is not a real object.

It is the offspring of the sentiments, on which time alone has any influence.18

We acquire the property of objects by accession when they are connected intimately with objects that are:

• already our property, and
• inferior to them.

Thus, our garden’s fruits, our cattle’s offspring, and our slaves’ work, are all esteemed our property even before possession.

When objects are connected together in the imagination, they are:

• put on the same footing, and
• commonly supposed to have the same qualities.

We readily pass from one object to the other.

We make no difference in our judgments on them, especially if the latter are inferior to the former.19

The mind has a natural propensity to join relations, especially resembling ones.

• It finds a kind of fitness and uniformity in such a union.

These laws of nature are derived from this propensity.

• Property always follows the present possession on the first formation of society.
• It afterwards arises from the first or long possession.

Relation is not confined merely to one degree.

• It is confined from an object that is related to us.

We acquire a relation to every other object related to it, and so on, until the thought loses the chain by too long a progress.

No matter how the chain is weakened by a removed relation, it is not immediately destroyed.

It frequently connects two objects through an intermediate object related to both.

This principle has such force that it:

• gives rise to the right of accession, and
• causes us to acquire the property of the objects:
  • that we have, and
  • that are closely connected with them.

Suppose a German, a French, and a Spaniard come into a room with a bottle of Rhenish, Burgundy and Port on a table.

If they quarrel on their division, an umpire would naturally give each the product of his own country to show his impartiality.

This is from a principle that ascribes property to occupation, prescription and accession.

In all these cases, particularly that of accession, there is first a natural union between:

• the idea of the person, and
• the idea of the object.

Afterwards, there is a new and moral union produced by that right or property, which we ascribe to the person.

But a difficulty occurs here which:

• merits our attention, and
• may give us an opportunity to test this reasoning.

The imagination passes with greater facility from little to great, than from great to little.

The transition of ideas is always easier and smoother in the former than in the latter.

The right of accession arises from the easy transition of ideas which connects related objects.

Thus, the right of accession increases in strength as the transition of ideas is performed with greater facility.

When we have acquired the property of any small object, we readily consider any great object related to it as

• an accession, and
• as belonging to the proprietor of the small one.

Since in that case, the transition from the small to the great object:

• is very easy, and
• should connect them together in the closest way.

But in fact, the case is always found to be otherwise.

The empire of Great Britain seems to draw the Orkneys, Hebrides, Isle of Man, and Isle of Wight in its dominion.

But the authority over those lesser islands does not naturally imply any title to Great Britain.

In short, a small object naturally follows a great one as its accession.

But a great one is never supposed to belong to the proprietor of a small one related to it, merely because of that property and relation.

In this case, the transition of ideas is smoother:

• from the proprietor to the small object, which is his property, and
• from the small object to the great object,

It is smoother than:

• from the proprietor to the great object, and
• from the great object to the small object.

These phenomena are objections to the foregoing hypothesis: that the ascribing of property to accession is nothing but an affect of:

• the relations of ideas, and
• the smooth transition of the imagination.