The second theory on the other hand is that of the Teutonic conception of right corresponding to the historical facts of the gradual development of the state's power. If natural right is identical with non-historical right, then the first doctrine is for the modern state that of natural right, the second that of historical right. However much the boundaries of that recognized liberty have changed in the course of time, the consciousness that such boundaries existed was never extinguished in the Teutonic peoples even at the time of the absolute state.[113] This liberty accordingly was not created but recognized, and recognized in the self-limitation of the state and in thus defining the intervening spaces which must necessarily remain between those rules with which the state surrounds the individual. What thus remains is not so much a right as it is a condition. The great error in the theory of a natural right lay in conceiving of the actual condition of liberty as a right and ascribing to this right a higher power which creates and restricts the state.[114] At first glance the question does not seem to be of great practical significance, whether an act of the individual is one directly permitted by the state or one only indirectly recognized. But it is not the task of the science of law merely to train the judge and the administrative officer and teach them to decide difficult cases. To recognize the true boundaries between the individual and the community is the highest problem that thoughtful consideration of human society has to solve. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 108: "The most high and absolute power of the realm of England consisteth in the Parliament ... all that ever the people of Rome might do, either in _centuriatis comitiis_ or _tributis_, the same may be done by the Parliament of England, which representeth and hath the power of the whole realm, both the head and the body." _The Commonwealth of England_, 1589, Book II, reprinted in Prothero, _Select Statutes and Documents of Elizabeth and James I._, Oxford, 1894, p. 178.] [Footnote 109: 4 _Inst._ p. 36.] [Footnote 110: Art. 63. Stubbs, p. 306.] [Footnote 111: Art. 11. Stubbs, p. 527.] [Footnote 112: For years I have used my nose to smell with, Have I then really a provable right to it?]