  The texts do not explain how the ruler is selected, nor, given their differences, how people manage to agree on who qualifies as the most worthy candidate. No social contract is envisioned. Instead, the sovereign’s legitimacy seems to rest on an implicit, utilitarian consensus that social order is a paramount value, one that can be achieved only by establishing centralized political leadership that will impose unified moral standards. The texts pass over the question of how, given this shared commitment to utilitarian social order, the people developed such diverse conceptions of morality in the first place.