These are the judicial and political definitions of property. Philosophically, it may be said, that it is the right each man has to make something _his own_, that is to say, to attribute to himself the _exclusive_ right to enjoy something outside of himself.
We must distinguish between _possession_ and _property_. Possession is nothing else than _actual custody_: I may have in my hands an object that is not mine, which has either been loaned to me, or which I may have found; this does not make me its proprietor. Property is the right I have to exclude all others from the use of a thing, even if I should not be in actual possession of it.
=32. Origin and fundamental principle of property.=--The first property is that of my own body, but thus far it is nothing else than what may be called corporeal liberty. How do we go beyond that? How do we extend this primitive right over things which are outside of ourselves?
Let us first remark that this right of appropriating external things rests on necessity and on the laws of organized beings. It is evident, in fact, that life cannot be preserved otherwise than by a perpetual exchange between the parts of the living body and the particles of the surrounding bodies. Nutrition is _assimilation_, and, consequently, _appropriation_. It is, then, necessary that certain things of the external world should become _mine_, otherwise life is impossible.
Property is then _necessary_; let us now see by what means it becomes legitimate.
Property has been given several origins: _occupation_, _law_, _work_. According to some, property has for its fundamental principle the _right of the first occupant_. It is said that man has the right of appropriating a thing not in possession of some one else; the same as at the theatre, the spectator who comes first has the right to take the best place. (Cicero.) So be it; but at the theatre I occupy only the place occupied by my own body; I have not the right to appropriate the whole theatre, or even the pit. It is the same with the right of the first occupant. I have certainly a right to the place my own body would occupy, but no further: for where would my right then stop?
"Will the setting one's foot," says J. J. Rousseau, "on a piece of common ground be sufficient to declare one's self at once the master of it? When Nunez Balboa took on landing possession of the Southern Sea, and of the whole of Southern America in the name of the Crown of Castile, was that enough to exclude from it all the princes of the world? At that rate the Catholic king had but to take all at once possession in his study of the whole universe, relying upon subsequently striking off from his empire what before was in possession of the other princes." (Contrat social, liv. 1er, Ch. ix.)