William James's _The Varieties
of Religious Experience_ (1902).

CONVEX (Lat. _convexus_, carried round, rounded, from _con-_, with, and
_vehere_, to carry), a term for the exterior side of a curved or rounded
surface, as opposed to "concave" (Lat. _con-_, and _cavus_, hollow), the
inner surface.

CONVEYANCE, primarily the act or process of conveying anything. The verb
"to convey," now used in the senses of carrying, transporting,
transmitting, communicating or handing over, originally had the same
meaning as "convoy" (q.v.), i.e. to accompany, a meaning which still
survived in the 18th century. Like "convoy" it is ultimately derived
from the Late Lat. _conviare_ (not from _convehere_), but through the
old Norman French form _conveier_, which in central France passed into
the form _convoier_, mod. Fr. _convoyer_, whence "convoy." Apart from
the general sense given above the word conveyance is now used in three
special senses: (1) a carriage or other means of transport, (2) in law,
the transference of property by deed or writing between living persons,
and (3) the written instrument by which such transference is effected.
(See CONVEYANCING.)

CONVEYANCING, in English law, the art or science of conveying or
effecting the transfer of property, or modifying interests in relation
to property, by means of written documents.

History.

In early legal systems the main element in the transfer of property was
the change, generally accompanied by some public ceremony, in the actual
physical possession: the function of documents, where used, being merely
the preservation of evidence. Thus, in Great Britain in the feudal
period, the common mode of conveying an immediate freehold was by
_feoffment with livery of seisin_--a proceeding in which the transferee
was publicly invested with the feudal possession or _seisin_, usually
through the medium of some symbolic act performed in the presence of
witnesses upon the land itself. A deed or charter of feoffment was
commonly executed at the same time by way of record, but formed no
essential part of the conveyance. In the language of the old rule of the
common law, the immediate freehold in corporeal hereditaments lay in
livery, whereas reversions and remainders and all incorporeal
hereditaments lay in grant, i.e. passed by the delivery of the deed of
conveyance or grant without any further ceremony. The process by which
this distinction was broken down and t