133. It may be said that this is an arbitrary restriction of the term 'state.' If any other word, indeed, can be found to express the same thing, by all means let it be used instead. But some word is wanted for the purpose, because as a matter of fact societies of men, already possessing rights, and whose dealings with each other have been regulated by customs conformable to those rights, but not existing in the form to which the term 'state' has just been applied (i.e. not having a systematic law in which the rights recognised are harmonised, and which is enforced by a power strong enough at once to protect a society against disturbance within and aggression from without), have come to take on that form. A word is needed to express that form of society, both according to the idea of it which has been operative in the minds of the members of the societies which have undergone the change described (an idea only gradually taking shape as the change proceeded), and according to the more explicit and distinct idea of it which we form in reflecting on the process. The word 'state' is the one naturally used for the purpose. The exact degree to which the process must have been carried before the term 'state' can be applied to the people in which it has gone on, cannot be precisely determined, but as a matter of fact we never apply it except in cases where it has gone some way, and we are justified in speaking of the state according to its idea as the society in which it is completed.