The economic form of activity we easily recognise as individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic; the moral form is just as easily identified. To be moral, an action must first satisfy us as individuals occupying a definite point of time and space, and must also satisfy in us the transcendental being who defies time and space. Croce having made this distinction absolutely clear, could face the question concerning the nature of law. To him law is a _volitional act_ concerning a _class_ of actions. Therefore, where the volitional element or the element of class is wanting, there cannot be law. Obviously, however, the law is abstract; the act of will is, according to Croce, always of the individual, and the element of class is sufficient to deprive the law of anything like concrete life, be it an individual law or a social law. Since the freedom of human actions is logically bound up with his notion of practical activity, it is impossible to object that there is an essential difference between the programme of life laid down by any single man for himself, the programme of action laid down by any association, and the laws laid down by the state, the first being merely a matter of acceptance and the last relying on compulsion. Indeed, it is obvious enough that by compulsion one usually means the alternative of complying with the law or facing a penalty. Such alternative is the ground of a choice, and the citizen usually chooses, but always freely chooses, to obey the law rather than endure the penalty. The fact that some men do rebel is sufficient to prove that freedom cannot be abolished by compulsion. Then what is the essential difference between individual and social law? An attempt is usually made to differentiate them by saying that the latter has emanated from and is sustained by a _supreme power_. But where is the seat of this supreme power? Surely not in anything like a super-individual, dominating individuals. It is only to be found in the individuals themselves. And in this case its power and value correspond with the power of the individuals who compose it; it is the law of a circle empirically considered to be larger and stronger, but whose will is law in so far as the individuals composing it spontaneously conform to such a will, because they recognise the convenience of doing so. Monarchs who believed themselves to be all-powerful, have realised at certain moments that their power rested in a universal consensus of opinion, failing which their power vanished, or was reduced to a gesture of solitary command, not far from being ridiculous.