Here we come to the junction-point of the two doctrines which have ever contested, and still contest, the possession of the world. One maintains that power comes from below; that, in its origin as well as in right, it belongs to the people, to numbers; and that those who exercise it, exercise it only as delegates, as servants. This theory misunderstands the true principles and the true nature of power; but it tends to constitute those guarantees which rightfully belong to society. Considered as a theory, it maintains, and assumes to render legitimate, the despotism of numbers. But as, in practice, this despotism is impossible, it soon violates its own principle, and limits its operation to the organization of a system of guarantees, the object and result of which is to constrain actual power to become, in its conduct, rightful and legitimate power. {220} The opposite theory, which is more profound and true at its starting-point, assigns absolute power and sovereignty to that Being alone, in whom resides all truth and justice: it refuses it, at the outset, to chiefs, as well as to peoples; it subordinates both alike to eternal laws which they did not make, and which they are equally bound to observe. It reasonably affirms that all legitimate power comes from above, that it is derived from superior reason, not from number, and that number should submit to reason; but soon, forgetting that it has placed sovereignty beyond the earth, and that no one here below is God, it becomes dazzled by its own lustre; it persuades itself, or tries to do so, that the power which comes from above, descends upon earth as full and absolute as it is at its source; it is indignant that limits should be affixed to its exercise, and if there is nothing to stop its progress, it establishes, in fact, a permanent despotism, after having denied, in principle, its legitimacy; whereas, the opposite theory, which assumes to found despotism in principle, almost invariably ends by destroying it in fact, and by establishing only a limited power. Consequences Of The Visigothic Theory. Such, then, are the consequences of the theory regarding power and law, conceived by the Visigothic legislators. I do not say the consequences which logically flow from it, when the theory is held in all its bearings and faithfully followed out; but the actual consequences which it almost always entails, by the natural tendency of things, and by the deviation into which they are forced by the passions of mankind.