The conceptions of sovereignty which we inherit are derived from the primitive system of personal allegiances. That is why the conception of sovereignty has become increasingly confused as modern civilization has become more complex. In the Middle Ages the theory reached its symmetrical perfection. Mankind was conceived as a great organism in which the spiritual and temporal hierarchies were united as the soul is united with the body in “an inseverable connection and an unbroken interaction which must display itself in every part and also throughout the whole.” But of course even in the Middle Ages the symmetry of this conception was marred by the fierce disputes between the Emperors and the Popes. After the Sixteenth Century the whole conception began to disintegrate. There appeared a congeries of monarchs each claiming to rule in his territory by divine right. But obviously when there are many agents of the Lord ruling men, and when they do not agree, the theory of sovereignty in its moral aspects is in grave difficulties. As time went on, limitations of all kinds began to be imposed upon sovereigns. The existence at the same time of many sovereigns produced the need of international law, for obviously there could have been no international [p266] law in a world where all of mankind, barring infidels who did not have to be considered, were under one sovereign power. The limitations imposed by international law from without were accompanied by limitations imposed from within. These limitations from within were based on quite practical considerations. There grew up slowly in the Middle Ages the idea that the State originated “in a contract of Subjection made between People and Ruler.” The first modern writer to argue effectively that government was based not on a warrant from the Lord, but on a “social compact” is said to have been Richard Hooker, a clergyman of the Established Church, who held, in 1594, that the royal authority was derived from a contract between the king and the people. This idea soon became popular, for it suited the needs of all those who did not participate in the privileges of the absolute monarchy. It suited not only the Church of England, when as in Hooker’s time it was assailed, but also the dissenting churches, and then the rising middle class whose ambitions were frustrated by the landed nobles with the king at their head. The doctrine of the social compact was expounded in many different forms in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by men like Milton, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.