When a property teacher sets out to learn about the human facts in his subject—if, for instance, he wants to learn about the behavioral aspects of the law of the dead (wills, trusts, future interests and death taxation)—he will be discouraged by the fact that psychological literature has a great deal to say about sex, and even quite a bit about death, but almost nothing about property.

There are a couple of metaphysical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre, and, from the founders of psychoanalysis, the theory that our concern about property begins at the potty chair. But for the most part the men who have been most interested in studying the human spirit have not been concerned about our relationships with things. There may be a reason for that. And the reason may be useful for our profession, which necessarily deals with property and which should begin to learn what it cannot learn from behavioral science.