In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected, by the same title, and in the same degree.[240] The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others. Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example, religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness, invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition; but if you wish publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the liberty and reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted. From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a constituted repressive force. Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may be an act of violence and oppression. So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces. This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and defend the liberty of all, is called government. The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit of common liberty. Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,--to those who sacrifice society to government,--to those who consider government as the enemy of society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without government, society would be a war of all against all. Society makes the moral power of government, as government makes the security of society. Pascal is wrong[241] when he says, that not being able to make what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government, in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,--justice armed with force.