§ 88 Corporeal and Incorporeal Things
Closely connected with the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal ownership is that between corporeal and incorporeal things. The term thing (res, chose, sache) is used in three distinct senses by legal writers:—
1. In its first and simplest application it means merely a material object, regarded as the subject-matter of a right.206 According to this use, some rights are rights to or over things, and some are not. The owner of a house owns a thing; the owner of a patent does not.
2. In a second and wider sense the term thing includes every subject-matter of a right, whether a material object or not. In this signification every right is a right in or to some thing. A man’s life, reputation, health, and liberty are things in law, no less than are his land and chattels.207 Things in this sense are either material or immaterial, but the distinction thus indicated must not be confounded with that now to be explained between things corporeal and incorporeal.
3. In a third and last application the term thing means whatever a man owns as part of his estate or property. It is any subject-matter of ownership within the sphere of proprietary or valuable rights. Now we have already seen that according to the current usage of figurative speech ownership is sometimes that of a material object and sometimes that of a right. Things, therefore, as the objects of ownership, are of two kinds also. A corporeal thing (res corporalis) is the subject-matter of corporeal ownership; that is to say, a material object. An incorporeal thing (res incorporalis) is the subject-matter of incorporeal ownership; that is to say, it is any proprietary right except that right of full dominion over a material object which, as already explained, is figuratively identified with the object itself. If I own a field and a right of way over another, my field is a res corporalis and my right of way is a res incorporalis. If I own a pound in my pocket and a right to receive another from my debtor, the first pound is a thing corporeal, and the right to receive the second is a thing incorporeal; it is that variety of the latter, which is called, in the technical language of English law, a chose in action or thing in action; while the pound in my pocket is a chose or thing in possession.208
It is clear that if literally interpreted, this distinction is illogical and absurd. We cannot treat in this way rights and the objects of rights as two species of one genus. If we use the term thing in each case to mean a right, then the right of an owner of land is just as incorporeal as is that of his tenant. On the other hand, if the term is to be taken in each case to mean the object of a right, then the object of the tenant’s right is just as corporeal as is that of his landlord. The distinction between corporeal and incorporeal things is based on the same figure of speech as is that between corporeal and incorporeal ownership. Both distinctions become intelligible, so soon as we recognise the metonymy involved in the substitution of the subject-matter of a right for the right itself.209