It will now be easy to deal with the question of power as to third persons.  This is naturally a power coextensive with the intent.  But we must bear in mind that the law deals only or mainly with manifested facts; and hence, when we speak of a power to exclude others, we mean no more than a power which so appears in its manifestation. [235] A ruffian may be within equal reach and sight when a child picks up a pocket-book; but if he does nothing, the child has manifested the needful power as well as if it had been backed by a hundred policemen.  Thus narrowed, it might be suggested that the manifestation of is only important as a manifestation of intent.  But the two things are distinct, and the former becomes decisive when there are two contemporaneous and conflicting intents.  Thus, where two parties, neither having title, claimed a crop of corn adversely to each other, and cultivated it alternately, and the plaintiff gathered and threw it in small piles in the same field, where it lay for a week, and then each party simultaneously began to carry it away, it was held the plaintiff had not gained possession. 1 But the first interference of the defendant had been after the gathering into piles, the plaintiff would probably have recovered. 2 So where trustees possessed of a schoolroom put in a schoolmaster, and he was afterwards dismissed, but the next day (June 30) re-entered by force; on the fourth of July he was required by notice to depart, and was not ejected until the eleventh; it was considered that the schoolmaster never got possession as against the trustees. 3

We are led, in this connection, to the subject of the continuance of the rights acquired by gaining possession.  To gain possession, it has been seen, there must be certain physical relations, as explained, and a certain intent.  It remains to be inquired, how far these facts must continue [236] to be presently true of a person in order that he may keep the rights which follow from their presence.  The prevailing view is that of Savigny.  He thinks that there must be always the same animus as at the moment of acquisition, and a constant power to reproduce at will the original physical relations to the object.  Every one agrees that it is not necessary to have always a present power over the thing, otherwise one could only possess what was under his hand.  But it is a question whether we cannot dispense with even more.  The facts which constitute possession are in their nature capable of continuing presently true for a lifetime.  Hence there has arisen an ambiguity of language which has led to much confusion of thought.  We use the word “possession,” indifferently, to signify the presence of all the facts needful to gain it, and also the condition of him who, although some of them no longer exist, is still protected as if they did.  Consequently it has been only too easy to treat the cessation of the facts as the loss of the right, as some German writers very nearly do. 1