7. The value then of the institutions of civil life lies in their operation as giving reality to these capacities of will and reason, and enabling them to be really exercised. In their general effect, apart from particular aberrations, they render it possible for a man to be freely determined by the idea of a possible satisfaction of himself, instead of being driven this way and that by external forces, and thus they give reality to the capacity called will: and they enable him to realise his reason, i.e. his idea of self-perfection, by acting as a member of a social organisation in which each contributes to the better-being of all the rest. So far as they do in fact thus operate they are morally justified, and may be said to correspond to the 'law of nature,' the _jus naturae_, according to the only sense in which that phrase can be intelligibly used. 8. There has been much controversy as to what the _jus naturae_ ('Naturrecht') really is, or whether there is such a thing at all. And the controversy, when it comes to be dealt with in English, is further embarrassed by the fact that we have no one term to represent the full meaning of 'jus' or 'Recht,' as a system of correlative rights and obligations, actually enforced or that should be enforced by law. But the essential questions are: (1) whether we are entitled to distinguish the rights and obligations which are anywhere actually enforced by law from rights and obligations which really exist though not enforced; and (2), if we are entitled to do so, what is to be our criterion of rights and obligations which are really valid, in distinction from those that are actually enforced.