The Arrangement of the Law —though it has other meanings-—an intention to cause loss or damage as such, because it is loss or damage. If a
person does an act which he knows will cause loss or damage to another, but does not desire that, he does not act
maliciously. Duties of intention can, therefore, be subdivided into duties
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with the particular duties to which they relate. Others are of a more general character, applying to all duties or to many different duties. Those would more properly fall to be treated in a division by themselves, probably following after duties. Here would belong such subjects as defense of per
of simple intention, duties of culpable
sons or property, authority as a justifi
intention, and duties of malice. A duty may be so defined that it can
cation or excuse for acts which would otherwise be wrongful, license and the voluntary assumption of risks, im possibility, the act of God, and sundry other grounds of exceptions. I cannot attempt here to give even an enumeration of legal duties, as I
not be broken without at the same time violating the corresponding right. This is often the case with duties of actuality, especially when they are contract duties.
But in many duties, especially duties of reasonableness or intention, the duty
may be broken without any violation of right ensuing, or the violation may happen after an interval of time.
If
A lays poison to poison B's cattle, he breaks a duty of intention. If the cattle never eat it, there is no violation of right; or they may find it and eat it some time later.
It is not possible to define the various kinds of legal duties as succinctly and neatly as rights in rem. The acts which people can do are infinitely various, and
cannot be collected into obvious and mutually exclusive groups like the facts
which make up the contents of those rights. Any division and arrangement of duties must be somewhat arbitrary,
and there is room for difference of opinion. Also duties can hardly be defined so as not to overlap upon each other, the same conduct being at the same time a breach of several different
duties.
This overlapping is now recog
nized by the law, as where the plaintiff may sue either in trespass or in case.
did of rights in rem. But at the same time it does not seem to me that I can make the meaning of this paper and the true character and foundation of the plan of arrangement of the law to be
presented intelligible without a brief mention of some of the more important of the duties that correspond to rights in rem. I shall not give full definitions, but only short descriptions indicating their general nature and scope.
DUTIES OF ACTUALITY A person must not do any act the actual direct consequence of which is to cause physical contact with a person or thing. This is the duty which is usually broken in a trespass, assuming that neither intention nor negligence is necessary for a trespass, as to which
there is doubt. This duty corresponds to rights of life, bodily security, liberty and normal property. A person must not take possession
of a thing in violation of another's right of possession in it.
Legal duties are subject to exceptions, some to many and some to few. Some of those exceptions are special to particu
lar duties. Those in an arrangement of the law should be stated in connection
GENERAL DUTIES OF REASON ABLENESS A person must not do an act that is negligent from its tendency to cause,
