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366 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
not occasional or latent, but it is a situation, a social system ; it
is not an event, but a flow. It exists wherever there is will with
corporal or privative sanctions. This is its essential characteristic,
the will, the mere wish, the opinion, the expressed and obeyed
desire of one who commands, whether this command be good or
bad, wise or foolish, noble or base, right or wrong. Coercion is,
therefore, solely in the field of ethics. Here we find the third
factor in sovereignty, namely, right.
John R. Commons. Syracuse University.
[7» be continued.^
