segment of experience at which the historical
jurists were looking was far too short to justify a dogmatic
conclusion, even admitting the validity of their method.

It remains to consider some twentieth-century theories. These have not
been worked out with the same elaboration and systematic detail as
those of the past, and as yet one may do no more than sketch them.

An instinctive claim to control natural objects is an individual
interest of which the law must take account. This instinct has been
the basis of psychological theories of private property. But thus far
these theories have been no more than indicated. They might well be
combined with the historical theory, putting a psychological basis in
place of the nineteenth-century metaphysical foundation. A
social-psychological legal history might achieve much in this
connection.

Of sociological theories, some are positivist, some psychological and
some social-utilitarian. An excellent example of the first is Duguit's
deduction from social interdependence through similarity of interest
and through division of labor. He has but sketched this theory, but
his discussion contains many valuable suggestions. He shows clearly
enough that the law of property is becoming socialized. But, as he
points out, this does not mean that property is becoming collective.
It means that we are ceasing to think of it in terms of private right
and are thinking of it in terms of social function. If one doubts this
he should reflect on recent rent legislation, which in effect treats
the renting of houses as a business affected with a public interest in
which reasonable rates must be charged as by a public utility. Also it
means that cases of legal application of wealth to collective uses are
becoming continually more numerous. He then argues that the law of
property answers to the economic need of applying certain wealth to
definite individual or collective uses and the consequent need that
society guarantee and protect that application. Hence, he says,
society sanctions acts which conform to those uses of wealth which
meet that economic need, and restrains acts of contrary tendency. Thus
property is a social institution based upon an economic need in a
society organized through division of labor. It will be seen that the
results and the attitude toward the law of property involved are much
the same as those which are reached from the social-utilitarian
standpoint.

Psychological soci