 Bosanquet sees a relation between the “real” or ‘general will’ and the “common good”. He writes that “The General Will seems to be, in the last resort, the ineradicable impulse of an intelligent being to a good extending beyond itself” (op. cit., p. 127). This ‘good’ is nothing other than “the existence and the perfection of human personality” which Bosanquet identified with “the excellence of souls” and the complete realisation of the individual. It is so far as the state reflects the general will and this common good that its authority is legitimate and its action morally justifiable. Bosanquet describes the function of the state, then, as “the hindrance of hindrances” to human development. (op. cit., p. 189)