In this passage, which differs only in clearness and simplicity from others in the Social Contract itself, it is easy to see how far Rousseau had in his mind a perfectly definite idea. Every association of several persons creates a new common will; every association of a permanent character has already a “personality” of its own, and in consequence a “general” will; the State, the highest known form of association, is a fully developed moral and collective being with a common will which is, in the highest sense yet known to us, general. All such wills are general only for the members of the associations which exercise them; for outsiders, or rather for other associations, they are purely particular wills. This applies even to the State; “for, in relation to what is outside it, the State becomes a simple being, an individual” ( Social Contract , Book I . chap. VII ). In certain passages in the