... To this war of every man against every man this also is
consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and
wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no
common power there is no law: where no law, no injustice.... It is
consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no
dominion, no _mine_ and _thine_ distinct, but only that to be every
man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it."
2. Such is what Hobbes is pleased to call "the natural condition of
mankind," a condition which man would have every natural reason for
getting out of with all speed, were he ever so unhappy as to fall into
it. It is true that, apart from civil government, violence would reign
on earth. But it is not true that to live apart from civil government
is the natural condition of mankind. It is not true that the only
motive which draws men into civil society is the fear of violence, as
though there were no such facts and exigencies of human nature as
sympathy, friendship, intellectual curiosity, art, religion. It is not
true that the one reason for the existence of the civil power consists
in this, that without the restraining hand of the magistrate men would
bite and devour one another.
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