47. No obligation, then, as distinct from compulsion, to submit to an ostensibly sovereign power can consistently be founded on a theory according to which right either = simple power, or only differs from it, in the form of 'jus civile,' through being a power which an 'imperium' enables individuals to exercise as against each other. Hobbes could not, indeed, have made out his doctrine (of the absolute submission to the sovereign) with any plausibility, if he had stated with the explicitness of Spinoza that 'jus naturale' = 'naturalis potentia.' That it is so is implied in the account of the state of things preceding the establishment of sovereignty as one of 'bellum omnium contra omnes'; for where there is no recognition of a common good, there can be no right in any other sense than power. But where there are no rights but natural power, no obligatory covenant can be made. In order, however, to get a sovereignty, to which there is a perpetual obligation of submission, Hobbes has to suppose a covenant of all with all, preceding the establishment of sovereignty, and to the observance of which, therefore, there cannot be an obligation in the sense that the sovereign punishes for the non-observance (the obligation corresponding to 'jus civile' in Spinoza's sense), but which no one can ever be entitled to break. As the obligatoriness of this covenant, then, cannot be derived from the sovereignty which is established through it, Hobbes has to ascribe it to a 'law of nature' which enjoins 'that men perform their covenants made' (_Lev_., I. 15). Yet in the immediate sequel of this passage he says expressly, 'The nature of justice consisteth in the keeping of valid covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not but with the constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel men to keep them; and then it is also that propriety begins.' On this principle the covenant by which a civil power is for the first time constituted cannot be a valid covenant. The men making it are not in a position to make a valid covenant at all. The 'law of nature,' to which alone Hobbes can appeal according to his principles, as the source of the obligatoriness of the covenant of all with all, he defines as a 'precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinketh it may best be preserved' (I. 14). When a law of nature, however, is said to command or forbid, we must not understand those terms in that sense which, according to Hobbes, could only be derived from the establishment of an 'imperium.' This 'law of nature,' therefore, is merely an expression in a general form of the instinct by which, as Spinoza says, every living creature 'in suo esse perseverare conatur,' as guided by a calculation of consequences (for no meaning but this can be given to 'reason' according to Hobbes).