With trust as its antecedent, social capital comprises the potential capacities of a people to prosper. Building on the presence of social capital, social cohesion involves the internalization of social ethics and constitutes the level of realized propensity among citizens to engage in virtuous behavior for the common good. This theory elaboration asserts that social cohesion is defined largely by the autonomy of the individual to do good across group dynamics and organizational boundaries. The degree to which they act in a way that is beneficent to society as a whole is the degree to which we could say they have been "cohered" to that society.