lt had to be shown nor could absence of fault
be shown as a defence. There was fault because there was liability,
for all liability grew out of fault. Such treadings on the tail of its
own argument are very common in legal reasoning. Likewise in the case
of the absolute liability of the master of a ship, the innkeeper and
the stable keeper, the institutional writers could say that they were
at fault in not having proper servants, although here also fault need
not be established by proof nor could want of fault be made a defence.
As procedurally these liabilities arose in actions on the facts of
particular cases, the jurists at first lumped them with many other
forms of liability, which were not in fact dependent on intention and
were enforced in actions _in factum_, as obligations arising from the
special facts of cases (_obligationes ex uariis causarum figuris_).
Later they were called quasi-delictual obligations and they are so
designated in the fourfold classification of the Institutes. Buckland
has remarked that in almost all of the liabilities included under
quasi-delict in the Institutes there is liability at one's peril for
the act of another, especially for one's servant, as in the noxal
actions, the _actio de deiectis et diffusis_ (for things thrown or
poured from buildings upon a way) and the _actio de recepto_ against
an innkeeper. In other words, in these cases one was held without
regard to fault for injuries incidental to the conduct of certain
enterprises or callings and for failure to restrain potentially
injurious agencies which one maintained.

Modern law has given up both the nominate delicts and quasi-delict, as
things of any significance. The French civil code made the idea of
Aquilian _culpa_ into a general theory of delictal liability, saying,
"Every act of man which causes damage to another obliges him through
whose fault it happened to make reparation." In other words, liability
is to be based on an act, and it must be a culpable act. Act,
culpability, causation, damage, were the elements. This simple theory
of liability for culpable causation of damage was accepted universally
by civilians until late in the nineteenth century and is still
orthodox. Taken up by text writers on torts in the last half of that
century, it had much influence in Anglo-American law. But along with
this generalization the French code preserved a liability without
fault, developed out of the noxal actions, whereby paren