The origins of property reach indeed back to prehuman times.[1] We may point out, first of all, that those objects which earliest became subject to private ownership such as weapons, tools, articles of ornament, and clothing, are commonly regarded by early man as integral parts of the owner's personality. They are him almost as much as his bodily members, his hair, his saliva, his footprints, all of which things the savage identifies with the individual and as such employs in many practices of sympathetic magic.[2]
Further proof of the more or less complete identification of personal property with the proprietor is seen in the fact that very frequently his right of ownership does not cease with death. His chattels are buried with him, or burned over his grave, or it may be simply abandoned and allowed to decay. Such customs often keep a primitive community sunk in constant poverty. Their commonest origin no doubt lies in the belief that the dead man in his other life has need of his earthly goods. Hence springs the funeral sacrifice, perhaps the most widespread religious rite that man has ever practiced. But taboo ideas, also, have helped to establish the habit. To many a savage nothing is more dangerous than the contagion of death. He will take the most elaborate precautions to protect himself from it. Thus arise the widespread rules which prohibit the living from making use of any objects which once belonged to the dead. As has been lately remarked of the Kafirs, "in their belief a man's personality haunts his possessions."[3] The Amazulu are afraid to wear the clothing of a dead man.[4] Some South African tribes after a funeral burn the house occupied by the deceased, with its entire contents. Grain, utensils, arms, ornaments, charms, furniture, beds, and bedding are polluted, the stain cannot be cleansed; they must all be cast into the fire.[5] Similar notions of uncleanness
- ↑ Cf. R. Petrucci, Les origines naturelles de la propriété (Bruxelles, 1905).
- ↑ Cf. Professor Veblen's suggestive article: "The Beginnings of Ownership," Amer. Journ. Sociology (1898), IV, 352-65.
- ↑ Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), p. 83.
- ↑ Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 13.
- ↑ Macdonald, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (1890), XIX, 276.
