imagined with equal readiness.
Pursuing this method of examination, we might fairly ask whether the
man who had _occupied_ (Blackstone evidently uses this word with its
ordinary English meaning) a particular spot of ground for rest or
shade would be permitted to retain it without disturbance. The chances
surely are that his right to possession would be exactly coextensive
with his power to keep it, and that he would be constantly liable to
disturbance by the first comer who coveted the spot and thought
himself strong enough to drive away the possessor. But the truth is
that all such cavil at these positions is perfectly idle from the very
baselessness of the positions themselves. What mankind did in the
primitive state may not be a hopeless subject of inquiry, but of their
motives for doing it it is impossible to know anything. These sketches
of the plight of human beings in the first ages of the world are
effected by first supposing mankind to be divested of a great part
of the circumstances by which they are now surrounded, and by
then assuming that, in the condition thus imagined, they would
preserve the same sentiments and prejudices by which they are now
actuated,--although, in fact, these sentiments may have been created
and engendered by those very circumstances of which, by the
hypothesis, they are to be stripped.

There is an aphorism of Savigny which has been sometimes thought to
countenance a view of the origin of property somewhat similar to the
theories epitomised by Blackstone. The great German jurist has laid
down that all Property is founded on Adverse Possession ripened by
Prescription. It is only with respect to Roman law that Savigny makes
this statement, and before it can fully be appreciated much labour
must be expended in explaining and defining the expressions employed.
His meaning will, however, be indicated with sufficient accuracy if we
consider him to assert that, how far soever we carry our inquiry into
the ideas of property received among the Romans, however closely we
approach in tracing them to the infancy of law, we can get no farther
than a conception of ownership involving the three elements in the
canon--Possession, Adverseness of Possession, that is a holding not
permissive or subordinate, but exclusive against the world, and
Prescription, or a period of time during which the Adverse Possession
has uninterruptedly continued. It is exceedingly probable that this
maxim might be enuncia