The form given to possession, and the sign, are themselves external circumstances, without the subjective presence of the will, which alone constitutes their meaning and value. But this presence — which is the use, utilization, or other manifestation of the will — falls within time, with respect to which objectivity consists in the continuance of this manifestation. Without this, the thing, abandoned by the actuality of will and possession, becomes ownerless; I therefore lose or acquire property through prescription.

Prescription has therefore not been introduced into the law merely out of an external consideration, contrary to strict right, that of cutting off the disputes and confusions which old claims might otherwise bring into the security of property, and so forth. Rather, prescription is grounded in the determination of the reality of property, in the necessity that the will to have something manifest itself. – Public monuments are national property, or rather, like works of art in general with respect to use, they count, through the soul of remembrance and honor dwelling within them, as living and independent ends; but abandoned by this soul, they become, on this side, ownerless for a nation and fall into contingent private possession — as, for example, the Greek and Egyptian works of art in Turkey. – The private property right of a writer’s family in his productions likewise lapses for a similar reason; they become ownerless in the sense that (in a manner opposite to that of those monuments) they pass over into universal property, and, with respect to their particular use as things, into contingent private possession. – Bare land, consecrated for graves, or for its own sake to non-use for all eternity, contains an empty, non-present arbitrariness, by whose violation nothing actual is violated, and whose observance can therefore also not be guaranteed.