But Duguit has done us large service not only in his doctrine of a law, a right, born of our actual life, of our always evolving life, but also in his insistence on the individual which makes him one of the builders of the new individualism.[115] We see in the gradual transformation of the idea of natural law which took place among the French jurists of the end of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the old particularism with the feelings-out for the true individualism. That the French have been slow to give up individual rights, that many of them have not given them up for any collective theory, but, feeling the truth underneath the old doctrine, have sought (and found) a different interpretation, a different basis and a different use, has helped us all immeasurably. * * * * * Group psychology shows us the process of man creating social power, evolving his own “rights.” We now see that man’s only rights are group-rights. These are based on his activity in the group—you can call it function if you like, only unless you are careful that tends to become mechanical, and it tends to an organic functionalism in which lurk many dangers. But the main point for us to grasp is that we can never understand rights by an abstract discussion of “subjective” _vs._ “objective”—only by the closest study of the process by which these rights are evolved. The true basis of rights is neither a “mystical” idea of related personalities, nor is it to be found entirely in the relation of the associated to the object sought; a truly modern conception of law synthesizes these two ideas. “Function,” de Maeztu tells us “[is] a quality independent of the wills of men.” This is a meaningless sentence to the new psychology. At present the exposition of the “objective” theory of law is largely a polemic against the “subjective.” When we understand more of group psychology, and it can be put forth in a positive manner, it will win many more adherents. Then as soon as the psychological foundation of law is clearly seen, the sovereignty of the state in its old meaning will be neither acclaimed nor denied. An understanding of the group process teaches us the true nature of sovereignty. We can agree with the pluralist school that the present state has no “right” to sovereignty;[116] we can go further and say that the state will never be more than ideally sovereign, further still and say that the whole idea of sovereignty must be recast and take a different place in political science. And yet, with the meaning given to it by present psychology, it is perhaps the most vital thought of the new politics. The sovereign is not the crowd, it is not millions of unrelated atoms, but men joining to form a real whole. The atomistic idea of sovereignty is dead, we all agree, but we may learn to define sovereignty differently.