And yet, in spite of the apparently great amount of muscle power that is, so to speak, behind all legal rights, from the logical point of view, the use and effectiveness of this power is altogether contingent upon the exact nature of the claim and interest which one desires to be secured. The logical statement of the situation here involved would take the form of a hypothetical proposition, namely, _If_ the claim or interest is of a certain kind, _then and then only_ may it be established and protected. And while this might seem at first to indicate that legal rights were seriously lacking in point of authority, yet this is not the case, for the strongest possible assertions that can be made are always couched in the form of hypothetical propositions. As Couterat states in his “Algebra of Logic,” “Every proposition which implies another is stronger than the latter, and the latter is weaker than the one which implies it.” The blunt categorical proposition is far less powerful, since by itself it implies nothing whatever, whereas hypotheticals leave no doubt as to the necessary consequences. All the laws of nature, which, by the way, cannot be broken, are stated in hypothetical form. Moreover, since it is the antecedent, and not the consequent, of a hypothetical proposition which gives it strength, it is easy to see that any particular claim and interest is rendered all the more likely of being established and protected _if_ similar claims and interests have long been recognized in the law as valid. In practice we find this to be the case: the common law which is the oldest code is also the one to which new claims to legal right are invariably referred.