132. The fact that the state implies a supreme coercive power gives colour to the view that it is based on coercion; whereas the coercive power is only supreme because it is exercised in a state, i.e. according to some system of law, written or customary
133. In the absence of any other name, 'state' is the best for a society in which there is such a system of law and a power to enforce it
134. A state, then, is not an aggregate of individuals under a sovereign, but a society in which the rights of men already associated in families and tribes are defined and harmonised
135. It developes as the absorption of fresh societies or the extended intercourse between its members widens the range of common interests and rights
136. The point to be insisted on is that force has only formed states so far as it has operated in and through a pre-existing medium of political, tribal, or family 'rights'.
H. Has the citizen rights against the state?
137. As long as power of compulsion is made the essence of the state, political obligation cannot be explained either by the theory of 'consent,' or by that which derives all right from the sovereign
138. The state presupposes rights, rights which may be said to belong to the 'individual' if this mean 'one of a society of individuals'
139. A right may be analysed into a claim of the individual upon society and a power conceded to him by society, but really the claim and the concession are sides of one and the same common consciousness
140. Such common consciousness of interests is the ground of the 'natural right' of slaves and of the members of other states