86. But the Austinians, having found their sovereign, are apt to regard it as a much more important institution than--if it is to be identified with a determinate person or persons--it really is; they are apt to suppose that the sovereign, with the coercive power (i.e. the power of operating on the fears of the subjects) which it exercises, is the real determinant of the habitual obedience of the people, at any rate of their habitual obedience in respect of those acts and forbearances which are prescribed by law. But, as we have seen, this is not the case. It then needs to be pointed out that if the sovereign power is to be understood in this fuller, less abstract sense, if we mean by it the real determinant of the habitual obedience of the people, we must look for its sources much more widely and deeply than the 'analytical jurists' do; that it can no longer be said to reside in a determinate person or persons, but in that impalpable congeries of the hopes and fears of a people, bound together by common interests and sympathy, which we call the general will. 87. It may be objected that this view of the general will, as that on which habitual obedience to the sovereign really depends, is at best only applicable to 'self-governing' communities, not to those under a despotic sovereign. The answer is that it is applicable in all forms of society where a sovereign in the sense above defined (as a determinate person or persons with whom in the last resort lies the recognised power of imposing laws and enforcing their observance) really exists, but that there are many where there cannot fairly be said to be any such sovereign at all; in other words, that in all organised communities the power which practically commands the habitual obedience of the people in respect of those acts and forbearances which are enjoined by law or authoritative custom, is one dependent on the general will of the community, but this power is often not sovereign in the sense in which the ruler of an independent state is sovereign. It may very well be that there is at the same time another power merely coercive, a power really operating on people simply through their fears, to which obedience is rendered, and which is not in turn representative of a general will; but where this is the case we shall find that such power is only in contact with the people, so to speak, at one or two points; that their actions and forbearances, as determined by law and custom, are in the main independent of it; that it cannot in any proper sense be said to be a sovereign power over them; at any rate, not in the sense in which we speak of King, Lords, and Commons as sovereign in England.