Social order is a sacred right, which forms the basis of all others.  It does not proceed, however, from nature—­no man has natural power over his fellows, and might confers no right—­consequently it rests on a contract.  Not, however, on a contract between ruler and people.  The act by which the people chooses a king is preceded by the act in virtue of which it is a people.  In the social contract each devotes himself with his powers and his goods to the community, in order to gain the protection of the latter.  With this act the spiritual body politic comes into being, and attains its unity, its ego, its will.  The sum of the members is called the people; each member, as a participant in the sovereignty, citizen, and, as bound to obedience to the law, subject.  The individual loses his natural freedom, receiving in exchange the liberty of a citizen, which is limited by the general will, and, in addition, property rights in all that he possesses, equality before the law, and moral freedom, which first really makes him master of himself.  The impulse of mere desire is slavery, obedience to self-imposed law, freedom.  The sovereign is the people, law the general popular will directed to the common good, the supreme goods, “freedom and equality,” the chief objects of legislation.  The lawgiving power is the moral will of the body politic, the government (magistracy, prince) its executive physical power; the former is its heart, the latter its brain.  Rousseau calls the government the middle term between the head of the state and the individual, or between the citizen as lawgiver and as subject—­the sovereign (the people) commands, the government executes, the subject obeys.  The act by which the people submits itself to its head is not a contract, but merely a mandate; whenever it chooses it can limit, alter, or entirely recall the delegated power.  In order to security against illegal encroachments on the part of the government, Rousseau recommends regular assemblies of the people, in which, under suspension of governmental authority, the confirmation, abrogation, or alteration of the constitution shall be determined upon.  Even the establishment of the articles of social belief falls to the sovereign people.  The essential difference between Rousseau’s theory of the state and that of Locke and Montesquieu consists in his rejection of the division of powers and of representation by delegates, hence in its unlimited democratic character.  A generation after it was given to the world, the French Revolution made the attempt to translate it into practice.  “The masses carried out what Rousseau himself had thought, it is true, but never willed” (Windelband).