letship ; while the legal writers treat tbe subject from the legal rather than the de facto standpoint. It is also not unusual to spend attention chiefly on tbe pedigree of the doctrines rather than on the genesis and growth of tbe concepts. An endeavor at a genetjc account of tbe modem concepts of onnersbip is found in Jenks, Late and Politict in the Middle Aget, so also in Cmin Ingham, Wutern OivilixaNon fn iU Economic Aspects.
BUSINESS PRINCIPLES 73
Bonal force, the functional efficiency of the workman shaping material facts to human use, is in this doctrine accepted as the definitive, axiomatic ground of ownership; behind this the argument does not penetrate, except it be to trace the workman's creative efficiency back to its ulterior source in the creative efficiency of the Deity, the •* Great Artificer." With the early spokesmen of natural rights, whether they speak for ownership or for other natural rights, it is customary to rest the case finally on the creator's discretionary dispositions and workmanlike efficiency. But the refei^ ence of natural rights back to the choice and creative work of the Deity has, even in liocke, an air of being in some degree perfunctory ; and later in the life-history of the natural-rights doctrine it falls into abeyance ; whereas the central tenet, that ownerahip is a natural right resting on thej productive work and the discretionary choice ofi the owner, gradually rises superior to criticism and gathers axiomatic certitude. The Creator presently, in the course of the eighteenth century, drops out of the theory of ownership.
It may be worth while to indicate how this ultimate ground of ownership, as conceived by modern common sense, differs from the ground on which rights of the like class were habitually felt to rest in mediaeval times. Customary authority was the proximate ground to which rights,