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nize to be best attained through the State – hence its organization, which, with its regulation, he explains as follows:
Men with respect to physical and mental ability are born essentially equal. At least, there is so much native equality among men "as that though there be one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he."[1] Now, out of this essential equality of ability arises an equality of hope with reference to the attainment of ends; hence, when the same thing is desired by any two men, which cannot, however, be possessed by both, enmity arises between them. The outcome is, that in the pursuit of these ends, which concern self-preservation and commodious living, men attempt the subjugation or destruction of one another.[2] Hence, in a state of nature, where society is not organized in the form of the State, men are in a condition of war. Every man is against every man. In such a state of nature the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."[3] Furthermore, under such circumstances, there is no such thing as justice or injustice, right or wrong. These
- ↑ Leviathan, Pt. I., chap. XIII.; also, De Corp. Pol., Pt. I., chap. I.; also, Philosophical Rudiments, chap. I.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Bluntschli (The Theory of the State, p. 267, trans.) says: "But these expressions of Hobbes (and Spinoza) are to be understood rather as a logical statement of what would be the condition of man apart from civil society, than as distinctly implying a historical theory. They err from ignoring history rather than from asserting false history. The word 'natural is used merely in the negative sense of 'non-civil' or 'non-political.'" Still Hobbes, while disclaiming a belief that there was ever a time when this state of nature as a state of mutual warfare universally existed, distinctly says, "there are many places where they
Hobbes's theory of the ends that men naturally seek and his standard for determining their natural rights. This latter is never Pleasure simply, but always Preservation – though on occasion he enlarges the notion of 'preservation' into 'preservation of life so as not to be weary of it.'" – Outlines of the History of Ethics, pp. 164-5.