LEVIATHAN  (1651)
by Thomas Hobbes

INTRODUCTION

     NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by
the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated,
that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within,
why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves
by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For
what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many
strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the
whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet
further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature,
man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though
of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection
and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an
artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body . . . .

THE FIRST PART:  OF MAN
CHAPTER VI
OF THE INTERIOR BEGINNINGS OF VOLUNTARY MOTIONS,
COMMONLY CALLED THE PASSIONS;
AND THE SPEECHES BY WHICH THEY ARE EXPRESSED

     THERE be in animals two sorts of motions peculiar to them: One
called vital, begun in generation, and continued without
interruption through their whole life; such as are the course of the
blood, the pulse, the breathing, the concoction, nutrition, excretion,
etc.; to which motions there needs no help of imagination: the other
is animal motion, otherwise called voluntary motion; as to go, to
speak, to move any of our limbs, in such manner as is first fancied in
our minds. That sense is motion in the organs and interior parts of
man's body, caused by the action of the things we see, hear, etc., and
that fancy is but the relics of the same motion, remaining after
sense, has been already said in the first and second chapters. And
because going, speaking, and the like voluntary motions depend
always upon a precedent thought of whither, which way, and what, it is
evident that the imagination is the first internal beginning of all
voluntary motion. And although unstudied men do not conceive any
motion at all to be there, where the thing moved is invisible, or
the space it is moved in is, for the shortness of it, insensible;
yet that doth not hinder but that such motions are. For let a space be
never so little, that which is moved over a greater space, whereof

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that little one is part, must first be moved over that. These small
beginnings of motion within the body of man, before they appear in
walking, speaking, striking, and other visible actions, are commonly
called endeavour.
     This endeavour, when it is toward something which causes it, is
called appetite, or desire, the latter being the general name, and the
other oftentimes restrained to signify the desire of food, namely
hunger and thirst. And when the endeavour is from ward something, it
is generally called aversion. . . .
     That which men desire they are said to love, and to hate those
things for which they have aversion. So that desire and love are the
same thing; save that by desire, we signify the absence of the object;
by love, most commonly the presence of the same. So also by
aversion, we signify the absence; and by hate, the presence of the
object. . . .
     Those things which we neither desire nor hate, we are said to
contemn: contempt being nothing else but an immobility or contumacy of
the heart in resisting the action of certain things; and proceeding
from that the heart is already moved otherwise, by other more potent
objects, or from want of experience of them.
     And because the constitution of a man's body is in continual
mutation, it is impossible that all the same things should always
cause in him the same appetites and aversions: much less can all men
consent in the desire of almost any one and the same object.
     But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that
is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate
and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable.
For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with
relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and
absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from
the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the
man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the
person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom
men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule
thereof. . . .

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CHAPTER XIII
OF THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND AS
CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY AND MISERY

     NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as
that, though there be found 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. For as to the strength of body,
the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by
secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the
same danger with himself.
     And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded
upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general and
infallible rules, called science, which very few have and but in few
things, as being not a native faculty born with us, nor attained, as
prudence, while we look after somewhat else, I find yet a greater
equality amongst men than that of strength. For prudence is but
experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those
things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make
such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one's own wisdom,
which almost all men think they have in a greater degree than the
vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom
by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such
is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others
to be more witty, or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will
hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their
own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth
rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is
not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything
than that every man is contented with his share.
     From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the
attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same
thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies;
and in the way to their end (which is principally their own
conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to
destroy or subdue one another. . . .
     So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of
quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and
the third, for reputation. . . .
     Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common
power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is
called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For

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war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a
tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently
known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the
nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of
foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an
inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war
consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition
thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All
other time is peace.
     Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man
is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men
live without other security than what their own strength and their own
invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no
place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the
commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as require much
force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no
arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual
fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short. . . .
     It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor
condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so,
over all the world: but there are many places where they live so
now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the
government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural
lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in that
brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived
what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power
to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived
under a peaceful government use to degenerate into a civil war.
     But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were
in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings
and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are
in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators,
having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another;
that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of
their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours, which is
a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of
their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which
accompanies the liberty of particular men.
     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. Force and fraud are in

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war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the
faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in
a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and
passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in
solitude. 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. And
thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually
placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting
partly in the passions, partly in his reason.
     The passions that incline men to peace are: fear of death; desire of
such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their
industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles
of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles
are they which otherwise are called the laws of nature, whereof I
shall speak more particularly in the two following chapters.

CHAPTER XIV
OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURAL LAWS, AND OF CONTRACTS

     THE right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is
the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself
for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own
life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own
judgement and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means
thereunto.
     By liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of
the word, the absence of external impediments; which impediments may
oft take away part of a man's power to do what he would, but cannot
hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement
and reason shall dictate to him.
     A law of nature, lex naturalis, is a precept, or general rule, found
out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is
destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the
same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best
preserved. For though they that speak of this subject use to
confound jus and lex, right and law, yet they ought to be
distinguished, because right consisteth in liberty to do, or to
forbear; whereas law determineth and bindeth to one of them: so that
law and right differ as much as obligation and liberty, which in one
and the same matter are inconsistent.
     And because the condition of man (as hath been declared in the
precedent chapter) is a condition of war of every one against every
one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and
there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in

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preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a
condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one
another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of
every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any
man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which
nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a
precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to
endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he
cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of
war. 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 sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means
we can to defend ourselves.
     From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to
endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing,
when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of
himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all
things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as
he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man
holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men
in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their
right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest
himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no
man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that
law of the gospel: Whatsoever you require that others should do to
you, that do ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri
non vis, alteri ne feceris.
     To lay down a man's right to anything is to divest himself of the
liberty of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the
same. For he that renounceth or passeth away his right giveth not to
any other man a right which he had not before, because there is
nothing to which every man had not right by nature, but only
standeth out of his way that he may enjoy his own original right
without hindrance from him, not without hindrance from another. So
that the effect which redoundeth to one man by another man's defect of
right is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of his own
right original.
     Right is laid aside, either by simply renouncing it, or by
transferring it to another. By simply renouncing, when he cares not to
whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By transferring, when he
intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person or persons. And
when a man hath in either manner abandoned or granted away his
right, then is he said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those to
whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it:
and that he ought, and it is duty, not to make void that voluntary act

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of his own: and that such hindrance is injustice, and injury, as being
sine jure; the right being before renounced or transferred. So that
injury or injustice, in the controversies of the world, is somewhat
like to that which in the disputations of scholars is called
absurdity. For as it is there called an absurdity to contradict what
one maintained in the beginning; so in the world it is called
injustice, and injury voluntarily to undo that which from the
beginning he had voluntarily done. The way by which a man either
simply renounceth or transferreth his right is a declaration, or
signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or signs, that
he doth so renounce or transfer, or hath so renounced or transferred
the same, to him that accepteth it. And these signs are either words
only, or actions only; or, as it happeneth most often, both words
and actions. And the same are the bonds, by which men are bound and
obliged: bonds that have their strength, not from their own nature
(for nothing is more easily broken than a man's word), but from fear
of some evil consequence upon the rupture.
     Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or renounceth it, it is
either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to
himself, or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a
voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is
some good to himself. And therefore there be some rights which no
man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have
abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right
of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life,
because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself.
The same may be said of wounds, and chains, and imprisonment, both
because there is no benefit consequent to such patience, as there is
to the patience of suffering another to be wounded or imprisoned, as
also because a man cannot tell when he seeth men proceed against him
by violence whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the
motive and end for which this renouncing and transferring of right
is introduced is nothing else but the security of a man's person, in
his life, and in the means of so preserving life as not to be weary of
it. And therefore if a man by words, or other signs, seem to despoil
himself of the end for which those signs were intended, he is not to
be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will, but that
he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.
     The mutual transferring of right is that which men call contract. . . .

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THE SECOND PART:  OF COMMONWEALTH

CHAPTER XVII
OF THE CAUSES, GENERATION, AND DEFINITION
OF A COMMONWEALTH

     THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love
liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that
restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths,
is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented
life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that
miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath
been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible
power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the
performance of their covenants, and observation of those laws of
nature set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters.
     For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and,
in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without
the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to
our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and
the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no
strength to secure a man at all. Therefore, notwithstanding the laws
of nature (which every one hath then kept, when he has the will to
keep them, when he can do it safely), if there be no power erected, or
not great enough for our security, every man will and may lawfully
rely on his own strength and art for caution against all other men. . . .
The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to
defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one
another, and thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their
own industry and by the fruits of the earth they may nourish
themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and
strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce
all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will: which is as
much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear
their person; and every one to own and acknowledge himself to be
author of whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act, or
cause to be acted, in those things which concern the common peace
and safety; and therein to submit their wills, every one to his
will, and their judgements to his judgement. This is more than
consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all in one and the
same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such
manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise and give
up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of
men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and
authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude

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so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH; in Latin, CIVITAS.
This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak
more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the
immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority, given
him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so
much power and strength conferred on him that, by terror thereof, he
is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual
aid against their enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the essence of
the Commonwealth; which, to define it, is: one person, of whose acts a
great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made
themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength
and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace
and common defence.
     And he that carryeth this person is called sovereign, and said to
have sovereign power; and every one besides, his subject.
The attaining to this sovereign power is by two ways. One, by
natural force: as when a man maketh his children to submit themselves,
and their children, to his government, as being able to destroy them
if they refuse; or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, giving
them their lives on that condition. The other, is when men agree
amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men,
voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all
others. This latter may be called a political Commonwealth, or
Commonwealth by Institution; and the former, a Commonwealth by
acquisition. And first, I shall speak of a Commonwealth by
institution.

CHAPTER XXI
OF THE LIBERTY OF SUBJECTS

     LIBERTY, or freedom, signifieth properly the absence of opposition
(by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion); and may be
applied no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to
rational. . . .
     But when the words free and liberty are applied to anything but
bodies, they are abused; for that which is not subject to motion is
not to subject to impediment . . . .
     But as men, for the attaining of peace and conservation of
themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which we call a
Commonwealth; so also have they made artificial chains, called civil
laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one
end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given
the sovereign power, and at the other to their own ears. These
bonds, in their own nature but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold,
by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them.

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In relation to these bonds only it is that I am to speak now of
the liberty of subjects. For seeing there is no Commonwealth in the
world wherein there be rules enough set down for the regulating of all
the actions and words of men (as being a thing impossible): it
followeth necessarily that in all kinds of actions, by the laws
pretermitted, men have the liberty of doing what their own reasons
shall suggest for the most profitable to themselves. . . .
The liberty of a subject lieth therefore only in those
things which, in regulating their actions, the sovereign hath
pretermitted: such as is the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise
contract with one another; to choose their own abode, their own
diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they
themselves think fit; and the like.
     Nevertheless we are not to understand that by such liberty the
sovereign power of life and death is either abolished or limited.
For it has been already shown that nothing the sovereign
representative can do to a subject, on what pretence soever, can
properly be called injustice or injury; because every subject is
author of every act the sovereign doth, so that he never wanteth right
to any thing, otherwise than as he himself is the subject of God,
and bound thereby to observe the laws of nature. . . .
To come now to the particulars of the true liberty of a subject;
that is to say, what are the things which, though commanded by the
sovereign, he may nevertheless without injustice refuse to do . . . .
it is manifest that every subject has liberty in all those things the
right whereof cannot by covenant be transferred. I have shown
before, in the fourteenth Chapter, that covenants not to defend a
man's own body are void. . . .
     As for other liberties, they depend on the silence of the law. In
cases where the sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the subject
hath the liberty to do, or forbear, according to his own discretion.
And therefore such liberty is in some places more, and in some less;
and in some times more, in other times less, according as they that
have the sovereignty shall think most convenient. . . . .
     The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as
long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to
protect them. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves,
when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished.

Edited by J. Carl Mickelsen