sed to the dignity
of free-willing subjects, although they have no subjective claim to be
respected. Thus the first possessor founds upon a common innate right
of taking possession, and to disturb him is a wrong. The first taking
of possession has "a title of right" behind it in the principle of the
original common claim to possession. It results that this taker
obtains a control "realized by the understanding and independent of
relations of space," and he or those who derive from him may possess a
parcel of land although remote from it physically. Such a possession
is only possible in a state of civil society. In civil society, a
declaration by word or act that an external thing is mine and making
it an object of the exercise of my will is "a juridical act." It
involves a declaration that others are under a duty of abstaining from
the use of the object. It also involves an admission that I am bound
in turn toward all others with respect to the objects they have made
"externally theirs." For we are brought to the fundamental principle
of justice that requires each to regulate his conduct by a universal
rule that will give like effect to the will of others. This is
guaranteed by the legal order in civil society and gives us the regime
of external mine and thine. Having thus worked out a theory of _meum_
and _tuum_ as legal institutions, Kant turns to a theory of
acquisition, distinguishing an original and primary from a derived
acquisition. Nothing is originally mine without a juridical act. The
elements of this legal transaction of original acquisition are three:
(1) "Prehension" of an object which belongs to no one; (2) an act of
the free will interdicting all others from using it as theirs; (3)
appropriation as a permanent acquisition, receiving a lawmaking force
from the principle of reconciling wills according to a universal law,
whereby all others are obliged to respect and act in conformity to the
will of the appropriator with respect to the thing appropriated. Kant
then proceeds to work out a theory of derivative acquisition by
transfer or alienation, by delivery or by contract, as a legal giving
effect to the individual will by universal rules, not incompatible
with a like efficacy in action of all other wills. This metaphysical
version of the Roman theory of occupation is evidently the link
between the eighteenth century and Savigny's aphorism that all
property is founded in adverse possession ripened by prescri