ve been applicable, even in the
earliest ages, to aught but the substance of the thing; nor could it be
extended to the use of it. For, by the law of nature and reason, he who
first began to use it, acquired therein a kind of transient property, that
lasted so long as he was using it, and no longer. Or, to speak with
greater precision, the right of possession continued for the same time,
only, that the act of possession lasted.

Thus, the ground was in common, and no part of it was the permanent
property of any man in particular; yet, whoever was in the occupation of
any determined spot of it, for rest, for shade, or the like, acquired for
the time a sort of ownership, from which it would have been unjust and
contrary to the law of nature to have driven him by force; but, the
instant that he quitted the use or occupation of it, another might seize
it without injustice. Thus, also, a vine or other tree might be said to be
in common, as all men were equally entitled to its produce; and yet, any
private individual might gain the sole property of the fruit which he had
gathered for his own repast: a doctrine well illustrated by Cicero, who
compares the world to a great theater, which is common to the public, and
yet the place which any man has taken is, for the time, his own.

But when mankind increased in number, craft, and ambition, it became
necessary to entertain conceptions of a more permanent dominion; and to
appropriate to individuals not the immediate use only, but the very
substance of the thing to be used. Otherwise, innumerable tumults must
have arisen, and the good order of the world been continually broken and
disturbed, while a variety of persons were striving who should get the
first occupation of the same thing, or disputing which of them had
actually gained it. As human life also grew more and more refined,
abundance of conveniences were devised to render it more easy, commodious,
and agreeable; as habitations for shelter and safety, and raiment for
warmth and decency. But no man would be at the trouble to provide either,
so long as he had only a usufructuary property in them, which was to cease
the instant that he quitted possession; if, as soon as he walked out of
his tent or pulled off his garment, the next stranger who came by would
have a right to inhabit the one and to wear the other.

In the case of habitations, in particular, it was natural to observe that
even the brute creation, to whom everythin