The seeking of the organs of society which are the immediate source of legal sanctions, the seeking of the ultimate source of political control—these are the quests of jurists and political philosophers. To their search must be added a study of the process by which a genuine sovereignty is created. The political pluralists are reacting against the sovereignty which our legal theory postulates, for they see that there is no such thing actually, but if sovereignty is at present a legal fiction, the matter need not rest there—we must seek to find how a genuine social and political control can be produced. The understanding of self-government, of democracy, is bound up with the conception of sovereignty as a psychological process. The idea of sovereignty held by guild socialists[105] is based largely on the so-called “objective” theory of _le droit_ expounded by M. Léon Duguit of Bordeaux. This theory is accepted as the “juridical basis” of a new state, what some call the functionarist state.[106] Man, Duguit tells us, has no rights as man, but only as a member of the social order. His rights are based on the fact of social interdependence—on his relations and consequent obligations. In fact he has no rights, but duties and powers. All power and all obligation is found in “social solidarity,” in a constantly evolving social solidarity.[107] The elaboration of this theory is Duguit’s large contribution to political thought. His _droit_ is a dynamic law—it can never be captured and fixed. The essential weakness of his doctrine is that he denies the possibility of a collective will, which means that he ignores the psychology of the social process. He and his followers reject the notion of a collective will as “_concept de l’esprit dénué de toute réalité positive_.” If this is their idea of a collective will, they are right to reject it. I ask for its acceptance only so far as it can be proved to have positive reality. There is only one way in the world by which you can ever know whether there is a collective will, and that is by actually trying to make one; you need not discuss a collective will as a theory. If experiment proves to us that we cannot have a collective will, we must accept the verdict. Duguit thinks that when we talk of the sovereignty of the people we mean an abstract sovereignty; the new psychology means by the sovereignty of the people that which they actually create. It is true that we have none at present. Duguit is perfectly right in opposing the old theory of the “sovereign state.”