ological theories have been advanced chiefly in
Italy. They seek the foundation of property in an instinct of
acquisitiveness, considering it a social development or social
institution on that basis.

Social-utilitarian theories explain and justify property as an
institution which secures a maximum of interests or satisfies a
maximum of wants, conceiving it to be a sound and wise bit of social
engineering when viewed with reference to its results. This is the
method of Professor Ely's well-known book on Property and Contract. No
one has yet done so, but I suspect one might combine this mode of
thought with the civilization interpretation of the Neo-Hegelians and
argue that the system of individual property, on the whole, conduces
to the maintaining and furthering of civilization--to the development
of human powers to the most of which they are capable--instead of
viewing it as a realization of the idea of civilization as it unfolds
in human experience. Perhaps the theories of the immediate future will
run along some such lines. For we have had no experience of conducting
civilized society on any other basis, and the waste and friction
involved in going to any other basis must give us pause. Moreover,
whatever we do, we must take account of the instinct of
acquisitiveness and of individual claims grounded thereon. We may
believe that the law of property is a wise bit of social engineering
in the world as we know it, and that we satisfy more human wants,
secure more interests, with a sacrifice of less thereby than by
anything we are likely to devise--we may believe this without holding
that private property is eternally and absolutely necessary and that
human society may not expect in some civilization, which we cannot
forecast, to achieve something different and something better.

VI

Contract

Wealth, in a commercial age, is made up largely of promises. An
important part of everyone's substance consists of advantages which
others have promised to provide for or to render to him; of demands to
have the advantages promised which he may assert not against the world
at large but against particular individuals. Thus the individual
claims to have performance of advantageous promises secured to him. He
claims the satisfaction of expectations created by promises and
agreements. If this claim is not secured friction and waste obviously
result, and unless some countervailing interest must come into account
which wou