society and a state of nature, governed by such a law of nature, was untenable; that a state of things out of which political society could have arisen by compact, must have been one in which the individual regarded himself as a member of a society which has claims on him and on which he has claims, and that such society is already in principle a political society. But the ambiguity attending the conception of the law of nature prevented them from being considered. When the writers in question spoke of a law of nature, to which men in the state of nature were subject, they did not make it clear to themselves that this law, as understood by them, could not exist at all without there being some recognition or consciousness of it on the part of those subject to it. The designation of it as 'law of nature' or 'law of God' helped to disguise the fact that there was no imponent of it, in the sense in which a law is imposed on individuals by a political superior. In the absence of such an imponent, unless it is either a uniformity in the relations of natural events or an irresistible force--and it is not represented in either of these ways in juristic writings--it can only mean a recognition of obligation arising in the consciousness of the individual from his relations to society. But this not being clearly realised, it was possible to represent the law of nature as antecedent to the laws imposed by a political superior, without its being observed that this implied the antecedence of a condition of things in which the result supposed to be obtained through the formation of political society--the establishment, viz. of reciprocal claims to freedom and equality on the part of members of a society--already existed.