First edition in English of Gumplowicz’ Grundriss der Soziologie (1885). Gumplowicz was chiefly interested in jurisprudence, and its relation to the ethnology and nationhood of ‘mixed’ societies, where two or more racial groups have come together. Continuing here from his earlier Rassenkampf or Race-Struggle of 1883, Gumplowicz draws a key definition between morality (or natural law), which exists in primitive society and is instinctive to its individuals, and the concept of rights, which is necessary for complex, mixed societies. It is the supreme duty of the state to impart the ‘higher morality’ necessary for the observance of a single set of rights by individuals in contesting groups. But Gumplowicz sounds an important warning: the state belongs more to ‘might’ than ‘right’, though it is responsible for the latter, and with this particular thought he clearly has Germany in mind.