The ownership of a right is, in the second place, opposed to the encumbrance of it. The owner of the right is he in whom the right itself is vested; while the encumbrancer of it is he in whom is vested, not the right itself, but some adverse, dominant, and limiting right in respect of it. A. may be the owner of property, B. the lessee of it, C. the sub-lessee, D. the first mortgagee, E. the second mortgagee, and so on indefinitely. Legal nomenclature, however, does not supply separate names for every distinct kind of encumbrancer. There is no distinctive title, for example, by which we may distinguish from the owner of the property him who has an easement over it or the benefit of a covenant which runs with it.
Although encumbrance is thus opposed to ownership, every encumbrancer is nevertheless himself the owner of the encumbrance. The mortgagee of the land is the owner of the mortgage. The lessee of the land is the owner of the lease. The mortgagee of the mortgage is the owner of the sub-mortgage. That is to say, he in whom an encumbrance is vested stands in a definite relation not merely to it, but also to the right encumbered by it. Considered in relation to the latter, he is an encumbrancer; but considered in relation to the former, he is himself an owner.
Ownership is of various kinds, and the following distinctions are of sufficient importance and interest to deserve special examination:
1. Corporeal and Incorporeal Ownership.
2. Sole Ownership and Co-ownership.
3. Trust-Ownership and Beneficial Ownership.
4. Legal and Equitable Ownership.
5. Vested and Contingent Ownership.
§ 87. Corporeal and Incorporeal Ownership.
Although the true subject-matter of ownership is in all cases a right, a very common form of speech enables us to speak of the ownership of material things. We speak of owning, acquiring, or transferring, not rights in land or chattels, but the land or chattels themselves. That is to say, we identify by way of metonymy the right with the material thing which is its object. This figure of speech is no less convenient than familiar. The concrete reference to the material object relieves us from the strain of abstract thought. Rights are dim abstractions, while material things are visible realities; and it is easier to think and speak of the latter than of the former, even though the substitution is a mere figure of speech. This device, moreover, is an aid to brevity, no less than to ease of comprehension.