I have treated of the law of carriers at greater length than is
proportionate, because it seems to me an interesting example of
the way in which the common law has grown up, and, especially,
because it is an excellent illustration of the principles laid
down at the end of the first Lecture. I now proceed to the
discussion for the sake of which an account of the law of
bailment was introduced, and to which an understanding of that
part of the law is a necessary preliminary.
[206] LECTURE VI.
POSSESSION.
POSSESSION is a conception which is only less important than
contract. But the interest attaching to the theory of possession
does not stop with its practical importance in the body of
English law. The theory has fallen into the hands of the
philosophers, and with them has become a corner-stone of more
than one elaborate structure. It will be a service to sound
thinking to show that a far more civilized system than the Roman
is framed upon a plan which is irreconcilable with the a priori
doctrines of Kant and Hegel. Those doctrines are worked out in
careful correspondence with German views of Roman law. And most
of the speculative jurists of Germany, from Savigny to Ihering,
have been at once professors of Roman law, and profoundly
influenced if not controlled by some form of Kantian or
post-Kantian philosophy.
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