Grotius and Pufendorf may be taken as types of the older natural-law theories of property. According to Grotius, all things originally were _res nullius_. But men in society came to a division of things by agreement. Things not so divided were afterward discovered by individuals and reduced to possession. Thus things came to be subjected to individual control. A complete power of disposition was deduced from this individual control, as something logically implied therein, and this power of disposition furnished the basis for acquisition from others whose titles rested directly or indirectly upon the natural foundation of the original division by agreement or of subsequent discovery and occupation. Moreover, it could be argued that the control of an owner, in order to be complete, must include not only the power to give _inter vivos_ but also the power to provide for devolution after death as a sort of postponed gift. Thus a complete system of natural rights of property was made to rest mediately or immediately upon a postulated original division by agreement or a subsequent discovery and occupation. This theory should be considered in the light of the facts of the subject on which Grotius wrote and of the time when he wrote. He wrote on international law in the period of expansion and colonization at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His discussion of the philosophical foundation of property was meant as a preliminary to consideration of the title of states to their territorial domain. As things were, the territories of states had come down in part from the past. The titles rested on a sort of rough adjustment among the invaders of the Roman empire. They could be idealized as the result of a division by agreement and of successions to, or acquisitions from, those who participated therein. Another part represented new "natural" titles based on discovery and occupation in the new world. Thus a Romanized, idealized scheme of the titles by which European states of the seventeenth century held their territories becomes a universal theory of property. Pufendorf rests his whole theory upon an original pact. He argues that there was in the beginning a "negative community." That is, all things were originally _res communes_. No one owned them. They were subject to use by all. This is called a negative community to distinguish it from affirmative ownership by co-owners. He declares that men abolished the negative community by mutual agreement and thus established private ownership. Either by the terms of this pact or by a necessary implication what was not occupied then and there was subject to acquisition by discovery and occupation, and derivative acquisition of titles proceeding from the abolition of the negative community was conceived to be a further necessary implication.