GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOCIETY. ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 475
tion under which alone security can be guaranteed. We
cannot, therefore, desire to revolt against the sovereign, or
even to weaken his power. There is, then, no right, there
is even, Hobbes seems to say, no possibility of disobedience.
For, once again, men appoint a ruler that they may have
security; in order that he may give them security, his
authority must be unquestioned, and to question it is to
negate the object with which society was constituted and
a ruler appointed.
To put the point in another way, the sovereign's right
to rule derives from his ability to fulfil the conditions and to
realize the purposes which led men to vest their powers
in him. His right, in fact, resides in his might, and his might
is the measure of his right. Thus the sovereign possesses
what Hobbes, if he were to make use of ethical conceptions,
might call a moral right to rule his subjects in so far as,
and only in so far as, he has power to rule them.
So long as his ability to give security persists, the sovereign
is supreme; his subjects cannot modify his powers, or depose
him and substitute another sovereign for that would be
a breach cf the covenant upon which they have entered
nor can they dissent from his decisions, nor refuse to obey
his edicts for that would be to put themselves outside the
community and the reign of law which the community
establishes, and back into the state of nature, in which
anybody would have the right to destroy them. On the
other hand, the ruler cannot himself forfeit or abuse his
powers, since he himself is outside the covenant which
brought him into being and there is, therefore, no covenant
for him to break.
Since the community exists in and through the power
which has been vested in the sovereign, the sovereign is
both its representative and its agent. All the acts which the
community does, or which any member of the community
does, are his acts, and vice versa. "A commonwealth," writes
Hobbes, "is said to be instituted when a multitude of men
do agree, and covenant, every one with every one, that to what-
soever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major