Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is the classic analyst of the social organism, the Leviathan of the state which binds us together in a system of contracts, spoken and unspoken. These contracts devolve a priori from a set of natural laws that stem from our abhorrence of the danger and inconvenience of civil war. The state of civil war, in which each individual is sovereign and judge of all others, in which violence and inhumanity may be performed without injustice and in which man is most fundamentally free is the state we seek to abolish by developing civil law and norms of propriety. We do this because we do not want to live in a state of perpetual danger and self-defense.

The anthroposophist who seeks the freedom of self-sovereignty and the right of judgment of others will be profoundly challenged by Hobbes. It is true that the Anthroposophical Society sometimes resembles individuals in a state of nature, but it is also true that anthroposophists are constantly in search of that Person on whom they may confer legitimate and explicit sovereignty, and thus settle themselves into a state of perpetual peace and spiritual harmony. That Person, of course, is Christ-Michael, but the problem is to understand the Contract that this Sovereign requires of his subjects.

The contract required by the anthroposophical Sovereign is the moral freedom and understanding in the individual. It is up to anthroposophists working together to come up with a higher form of freedom than the freedom of mere individuals asserting solitary viewpoints. The higher form of freedom has to do with the Royal Art, the art of anthroposophical conversation. The Royal Art is that which leads whole communities into the presence of Truth and Beauty. It is the Grail of propriety and intuition determined by groups of people applying individual intelligence to the moral needs of conversation.