ect for his personality by his fellow
men. It is not a legal advantage except as the law protects
personality. It is the physical person of the one in natural
possession which is secured, not his relation to the thing held.
Analytically the next grade or stage is what the Romanist calls
juristic possession as distinguished from natural possession. This is
a legal development of the extra-legal idea of custody. Where custody
or the ability to reproduce a condition of custody is coupled with the
mental element of intention to hold for one's own purposes, the legal
order confers on one who so holds a capacity protected and maintained
by law so to hold, and a claim to have the thing restored to his
immediate physical control should he be deprived of it. As the
Romanist puts it, in the case of natural possession the law secures
the relation of the physical person to the object; in juristic
possession the law secures the relation of the will to the object. In
the highest grade of proprietary relation, ownership, the law goes
much further and secures to men the exclusive or ultimate enjoyment or
control of objects far beyond their capacity either to hold in custody
or to possess--that is, beyond what they could hold by physical force
and beyond what they could actually hold even by the help of the
state. Natural possession is a conception of pure fact in no degree
dependent upon law. The legally significant thing is the interest of
the natural possessor in his personality. Possession or juristic
possession is a conception of fact and law, existing as a pure
relation of fact, independent of legal origin, but protected and
maintained by law without regard to interference with personality.
Ownership is a purely legal conception having its origin in and
depending on the law.

In general the historical development of the law of property follows
the line thus indicated by analysis. In the most primitive social
control only natural possession is recognized and interference with
natural possession is not distinguished from interference with the
person or injury to the honor of the one whose physical contact with
the physical object is meddled with. In the earlier legal social
control the all-important thing is seisin, or possession. This is a
juristic possession, a conception both of fact and of law. Such
institutions as tortious conveyance by the person seised in the
common law are numerous in an early stage of legal development. Th