14 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
institutions originated as private property; this differentiates human from animal society ; private property is the social expres- sion of the highest unity of man, self-consciousness.
Contrary to this view is the opinion of Professor Giddings, who, in noticing that McLennan affirms polyandry to have been the first marriage sanctioned by group opinion, sets up the cri- terion that human, as distinguished from animal, marriage is that form of marriage which first receives social acquiescence. " Mar- riage," he says, " is more than a fact of physiology and more than a relatively enduring cohabitation. Every possible group was tried — which one was first socially sanctioned? " '
Doubtless, social acquiescence is needed to confirm the par- ticular organization of the family which survives. But is this not true of the animal as well as of the human family? If our psychic distinction between man and animal is correct, then the human family needs not mere acquiescence, but acquiescence in private ownership. When this is vouchsafed, then that which was based only on might becomes also a right. Giddings' position respecting the family is maintained by T. H. Green respecting property in general. He holds that a necessary condition which " must be fulfilled in order to constitute property," even of the most simple and primitive sort, is " the recognition by others of a man's appropriations as something which they will treat as his, not theirs, and the guarantee to him of his appropriations by means of that recognition." The basis of this recognition he finds in the "general will" — i.e., "not the momentary spring of any and every spontaneous action, but a constant principle, operative in all men qualified for any form of society, however frequently overborne by passing influences, in virtue of which each seeks to give reality to the conception of a well-being , which he necessarily regards as common to himself with all others." =
Here is described, not private property, but the social or moral right of private property. Holland, looking at it from the law- yer's standpoint, defines such a right as " one man's capacity for
'Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1897. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, London, 1895, p. 217.
