MONEY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 225
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thing stable. The right to a part of the product of common
land was under primitive conditions dependent on an ac-
tive participation in the cultivation and the harvesting of
crops. For other forms of property, efficient use was the
only basis for a title. If the child wants to possess an ob-
ject because it stimulates his interest, he is usually satis-
fied with looking at it attentively and touching it. If that
desire is satisfied, he usually discards it. Among primitive
tribes, possession usually does not involve more than a
brief relationship of action or enjoyment, and the object
so possessed is thrown away the next minute with com-
plete indifference.
A concept of possession which does not imply some ac-
tivity or other is a mere abstraction. It develops out of
the former merely because the relationships between the
possessor and his possession become more certain, more
fixed, and more durable. The mere momentary relationship
changes into a permanent possibility of realizing these re-
lationships, into a certainty of being able to enjoy the ob-
ject anew each time it is desired. But possession is not
something qualitatively and substantially new over and
above the single cases of actual enjoyment. Property as
a juristic concept stands for something more than the sin-
gle rights to and enjoyments of the object, but the totality
of all possible and all actual enjoyments covers the con-
cept completely. It means the absolute sum of all possible
rights, and for that reason possession, not as abstraction
but as actuality, has as a necessary correlative an active
participation on the part of the possessor.
These various forms of subjective movement and men-
tal participation which are in their totality called posses-
sion are dependent on, and in a way determined by, the
qualities of the object possessed. Acquisition and fructi-
fication of non-monetary objects require specific qualities
