Duty is the law which imposes on us obligations either toward ourselves or toward others; it is a _moral necessity_ (p. 11). _Rights_ is the _power_ we have to exercise and develop our faculties conformably to our destiny, provided we allow other men the same power: it is a _moral power_ (Leibnitz). Each man, by reason of his enjoying liberty and intelligence, is a _person_, and should not be treated as a _thing_. "Man is a thing sacred to man," said the ancients. He is inviolable in his personality and in all that constitutes the development of his personality. Thence follows an immediate consequence: it is, that every man being man by the same title, no one can claim for himself a right which he is not willing to recognize at the same time in another; hence the _equality of rights_. Besides, the liberty of one cannot, without contradiction, suppress the liberty of another, whence this other definition: Right is the _accord of liberties_. =78. The rights of man.=--What are the principal rights of man? They are: the right of _self-preservation_; the right of going and coming, or _individual liberty_; the _liberty of work_; the _right of property_; the _liberty of thought_; the _liberty of conscience_; the _right of family_, etc. We have also seen that man (p. 52) has a final right which is the guaranty and the sanction of all others; it is the right of preventing by force every attempt at his rights; to _constrain_ others to respect his rights, and lastly, to _punish_ every violation of his rights. This is what is called the _right of self-defense_. =79. Public authority.=--Man having, as we have just seen, the right of self-defense by opposing force to any attack, possesses, when alone, and far from all human help, this right in all its plenitude. But it is easy to see the dangers and inexpediency of such a right in a society. Each man, in fact, when he meets with opposition to his will and desires, always thinks himself injured in his rights. If every one were free to defend himself in all circumstances, the right of self-defense would keep men constantly under arms; and society, without a regulating power to check their doings, would soon, as the philosopher Hobbes expressed it, be "_the war of all against all_." Hence the necessity of the State--that is to say, of a _disinterested power_--taking in hand the defense of all, and insuring the proper exercise of the right of self-defense by suppressing its abuses. This is what is called _public authority_. =80. Society and the State.=--We must distinguish between _society_ and the _State_, or _natural_ society and _civil_ society. Society is the union which exists between men, without distinction of frontiers--without exterior restraint--and for the sole reason that they are men. An Englishman and an Indian, as Locke says, meeting in the waste forests of America (Robinson and Friday), are, from the fact alone of their common nature, in a state of society.