 The natural state is a theoretical mechanism for further articulating these considerations. A relative notion, it appears in three distinct but overlapping versions, the third of which is specially elaborated by the DJN VII.1 account mentioned above. Each version involves a polarity or implied contrast: the natural state toward God (ad Deum), that in regard to oneself (in se), and that toward other human beings (ad alios homines). The first of these designates the human condition as such, conceived negatively as a “state of humanity” in contrast to both the amoral state of beasts but also “toward [or against] God.” Humans emerge from it – using their de facto traits and capacities (which Pufendorf associates with “soul”) – by moralizing themselves through social interaction, gradually articulating a normative sphere of rights and duties only formally imposed by their creator. The second natural state, with respect to oneself (in se), designates the basic helplessness of solitary humans and their almost inevitable lapse into an uncultivated, bestial life without mutual assistance. Classical accounts of this state depict individual humans as frustrated in their most basic needs and desires, and as incapable of the refinement needed to develop their distinctive faculties and exercise their freedom. Human interaction can sometimes and to some extent eliminate the natural state in this sense – a process facilitated by their prior, and concurrent, emergence from the mere state of humanity. As the third natural state shows, however, humans may also threaten, endanger, or interfere with one another unless their freedom is effectively restrained by law. Here law means more than the self-interpreted moral law already operative in the first two states of nature (which, pace Hobbes, are not entirely lawless or amoral); rather it refers to civil law which must be imposed by a political superior with both the authority and the effective power to command. Hence this natural state is best described as a pre-civil state, in contrast to the pre-cultural and merely human states. Note: in none of the three states does ‘natural’ function normatively in the sense of a model or ideal to be realized, as in some other forms of natural law theory. Instead, norms emerge as one leaves such natural conditions.