Correct behavior is governed by the sixth stage, the Social Contract and Individual Rights stage.
Though it is quite obvious that the theory of a social contract (or compact, as it is also called) contains a considerable element of truth - that loose associations for mutual protection preceded any elaborate idea or structure of law, and that government cannot be based exclusively on force - yet it is open to the equally obvious objection that the very idea of contract belongs to a more advanced stage in human development than the hypothesis itself demands.
Whilst some, like Voltaire and the Physiocrats, representatives of the privileged classes and careless of political rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments, other, plebeiaris like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the social contract and the sovereignty of the people.
One favourite theory was that sovereignty originated in a social contract.
Plato's Republic and Hegel's Philosophie des Rechts are the most typical examples of a fully developed philosophy of the state, but in the earlier modern period the prolonged discussion of natural rights and the social contract must be regarded as a contribution to such a theory.
