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 141. But though in this way there may be rights outside the state, the members of a state derive the rights which they have as members of other associations from the state, and have no rights against it 142. i.e. as they derive their rights from their membership in the state, they have no right to disobey the law unless it be for the interest of the state 143. And even then only if the law violates some interest which is _implicitly acknowledged_ by the conscience of the community 144. It is a farther question when the attempt to get a law repealed should be exchanged for active resistance to it 145. e.g. should a slave be befriended against the law? The slave has as a man certain rights which the state cannot extinguish, and by denying which it forfeits its claim upon him 146. And it may be held that the claim of the slave upon the citizen, as a man, overrides the claim of the state upon him, as a citizen 147. Even here, however, the law ought to be obeyed, supposing that its violation tended to bring about general anarchy. I. _Private rights. The right to life and liberty._ 148. There are rights which men have as members of associations, which come to be comprised in the state, but which also exist independently of it 149. These are 'private' rights, divided by Stephen into _(a)_ personal, _(b)_ rights of property, _(c)_ rights in private relations 150. _All_ rights are 'personal'; but as a man's body is the condition of his exercising rights at all, the rights of it may be called 'personal' in a special sense 151. The right of 'life and liberty' (better, of 'free life'), being based on capacity for society, belongs _in principle_ to man as man, though this is only gradually _recognised_