Different reasons to violate others: competition for the same objects, for gain, distrust of others, for safety, desire that others value them highly, for reputation .
- Law of nature: rule forbidding what is destructive to life or its preservation ("defend ourselves by all means that we can"). Right of nature: self-preservation ("seek peace and follow it") .
- Man is naturally in a state of war without a common power to keep everyone in check. (War = time when the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.).
- Everyone should be willing to give up the right of nature in favor of law, equalizing liberty.
- The only way to get the needed power is for everyone to confer all power t one person or an assembly, creating the sovereign, who is a real unity of the person. No revolution, censorship, lawmaking, judiciary, authority to make war and peace.
- Men are inclined towards peace because of fear of death, desire of necessities, .
hope to obtain, and reason of the laws of nature.
Chapter XIV: Of the first and second Naturall Lawes, and of Contracts .
- Right of nature is the liberty each man has to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature within his judgment or reason.
- Liberty absence of external impediments.
- A "Law of Nature" is a general rule that is discovered through reason. Such a law affirms human self-preservation and condemns acts destructive to human life. A law of nature is natural and inherently known by all because it can be deduced by innate mental faculties.
- Thus the first law of nature is: "That every man, ought to endeavor Peace, as farre as he can hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps and advantages of Warre".
- The first branch of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamental Law of Nature; which is, to seek Peace, and follow it. The Second, the summe of the Right of Nature of Nature; which is, By all means we can, to defend our selves.
