99. This latter doctrine arises out of the delusion of natural right. The individual, it is thought, having a right, not derived from society, to do as he likes, can only forego that right by an act to which he is a party. Therefore he has a right to disregard a law unless it is passed by an assembly of which he has been a member, and by the decision of which he has expressly or tacitly agreed to be bound. Clearly, however, such a natural right of the individual would be violated under most popular sovereignties no less than under one purely monarchical, if he happened to object to the decision of the majority; for to say, as Rousseau says, that he has virtually agreed, by the mere fact of residence in a certain territory, to be bound by the votes of the majority of those occupying that territory, is a mere trick to save appearances. But in truth there is no such natural right to do as one likes irrespectively of society. It is on the relation to a society, to other men recognising a common good, that the individual's rights depend, as much as the gravity of a body depends on relations to other bodies. A right is a power claimed and recognised as contributory to a common good. A right against society, in distinction from a right to be treated as a member of society, is a contradiction in terms. No one, therefore, has a right to resist a law or ordinance of government, on the ground that it requires him to do what he does not like, and that he has not agreed to submit to the authority from which it proceeds; and if no one person has such a right, no number of persons have it. If the common interest requires it, no right can be alleged against it. Neither can its enactment by popular vote enhance, nor the absence of such vote diminish, its right to be obeyed. Rousseau himself well says that the proper question for each citizen to ask himself in regard to any proposal before the assembly is not, Do I like or approve it? but, Is it according to the general will? which is only another way of asking, Is it according to the general interest? It is only as the organ of this general interest that the popular vote can endow any law with the right to be obeyed; and Rousseau himself, if he could have freed himself from the presuppositions of natural right, might have admitted that, as the popular vote is by no means necessarily an organ of the general interest, so the decree of a monarch or of an aristocratic assembly, under certain conditions, might be such an organ.