 Speaking generally (since the formation of individual states varies greatly), the moral entity of ‘the state’ is self-imposed by humans at the command of natural law when their pre-civil marital, parental, and particularly herilic associations – as well as other pact-based institutions such as property – become dysfunctional because of multiplying conflicts that lead increasingly to the unjustified use of force and, thus, reciprocal injury and insecurity. It is a defensive and precautionary response to such emergent conditions, a kind of cooperative scheme (conspiratio) or mutual protection association created as needed against the growing threat posed by other human beings (DJN VII.2.1–2). Contra Aristotle, the state is not a natural or ideal stage of human development emerging spontaneously from humans’ desire to live together (DJN VII.1.2–3), but an adventitious, willed self-help device broadly enjoined by natural law in either or both a prudential (i.e., recommended by sound reason) or deontological (i.e., commanded by God) sense (DJN VII.3.2). It is not required to eliminate human need (indigentia) in the pre-cultural natural state, since cities and other forms of association usually suffice for that (DJN VII.1.3 and 6; Brett 2011). Rather it secures these social arrangements and their cultural gains in the context of increased human numbers, relative scarcity and competition, growing disagreements, and the ensuing insecurity that comes from the interaction of individually weak and imperfectly social beings.