With that knowledge, he acts at his peril in
certain respects. If he crosses his neighbor's boundary, he is a
trespasser. The reasons for this strict rule have been partially
discussed in the last Lecture. Possibly there is more of history
or of past or present notions of policy its explanation than is
there suggested, and at any rate I do not care to justify the
rule. But it is intelligible. A man who walks knows that he is
moving over the surface of the earth, he knows that he is
surrounded by private estates which he has no right to enter, and
he knows that his motion, unless properly guided, will carry him
into those estates. He is thus warned, and the burden of his
conduct is thrown upon himself.
But the act of walking does not throw the peril of all possible
consequences upon him. He may run a man down in the street, but
he is not liable for that unless he does it negligently. Confused
as the law is with cross-lights of tradition, and hard as we may
find it to arrive at perfectly satisfactory general theory, it
does distinguish in a pretty sensible way, according to the
nature and degree of the different perils incident to a given
situation.
From the simple case of walking we may proceed to the more
complex cases of dealings with tangible objects of property.
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