With this by way of introduction, it is not difficult to understand why “right” in the legal sense of the word is so closely related to _might_. For the term “legal rights” refers not only to those claims and interests which may be established and protected, but also and rather to those which _have long been_ secured by force. In other words, some of them have the advantage of the momentum of custom and tradition. Now custom and tradition, whatever else they may be, are certainly action-patterns which are generated and maintained by the bodies of human beings. They are habits, both of overt action and covert thought,—response processes of the neuro-muscular apparatus. The tenacity of these habits, moreover, is due to the combined action of two well-known physiological mechanisms,—the conditioned reflex and the circular reflex. The conditioned reflex, which is dependent upon the repetition of stimuli, is particularly prevalent where day by day the same persons, the same kinds of property, and the same predicaments of living are met with; and so we may say that customs and traditions (and with them the inevitable claims and interests) are created by the environment as much as by the organism. The circular reflex, or proprio-ceptive reinforcement of any action-tendency, governs much of our behavior, even though we little suspect it. It underlies occupational postures, idiosyncracies of gait and of facial expression, and indeed, without circular reflexes we should not have either tenacity of purpose or the ability to hold a grudge. Its function in the establishment and maintenance of those action-patterns on which tradition depends is of paramount importance. And since these two reflexes are largely responsible for the difficulty with which habits of action and thought are broken, the support which they give to maintaining the tradition of legal rights is hardly to be overestimated. Thus, from the mechanistic point of view, the homage which we give to legal rights is after all simply equivalent to the expenditure of energy in our bodies for the purpose of maintaining particular habits of action. Indeed, in those who maintain the public peace, all the energy which goes into actions which promote the order of society is literally spent to uphold legal rights of one sort or another. It is this energy, this physical power, which we referred to recently when we said that “right” is partially equivalent to _might_.