In animals there are two sorts of motions—vital and voluntary. The beginnings of motion within man are called "endeavour." Appetite is a motion towards; aversion a motion fromwards. Some are born in us, some are products of experience. The object of a man's appetite he calls "good"; of his aversion, "evil"; whether in promise (beautiful and ugly), in effect (pleasant, painful), or as means (useful, hurtful). Pleasures and pains arise from an object present, of the senses; or in expectation, of the mind. Thus "pity" is the imagining of a like calamity befalling oneself.
"Deliberation" is the sum of the successive appetites or aversions which are concluded by the doing or not doing of the particular thing. "Will" is the last appetite in deliberating. So, in the inquiry of the truth, opinions correspond to appetites, and the final judgment, the last opinion, to the will.
There are two kinds of knowledge; of "fact," and of "the consequence of one affirmation to another." The former is nothing else but sense and memory, and is absolute; the latter is called science, and is conditional. The register of the first is called history, natural or civil; that of the second is contained in books of philosophy, in corresponding groups—natural philosophy, and civil philosophy, or politics. Natural philosophy breaks up into a number of groups, including mental and moral science.
Power is present means, whencesoever derived, to attain some future apparent good. Value is the price that will be given for the use of a man's power. To honour a man is to acknowledge his power; to dishonour him is to depreciate it. The public worth of a man is the value set on him by the commonwealth.
By manners, I mean those qualities of mankind which are concerned with their living together in peace and unity. Desire of power tends to produce strife; other desires, as for ease, or for knowledge, incline men to obey a common power. To receive benefits, or to do injuries, greater than can be repaid or expiated, tends to make us hate the benefactor or the injured party.
II.—Of Contract and Sovereignty
Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind that are born in them, that one man cannot in respect of these claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend. From this equality ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. Therefore, if two men desire the same thing which they cannot both enjoy they become enemies, and seek each the destruction of the other, each mistrusting the other. So men invade each other, first for gain, second for safety, and third for reputation.
Hence, while men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a state of war, every man against every man. In this state, notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place. Probably there never was actually such a universal condition; but we see it now among savage races and in the mutual relations of sovereigns. In this state of war, reason suggesteth articles of peace upon which men may agree; which articles are otherwise called the laws of nature.
The "right of nature" is the right of self-preservation. "Liberty" is the absence of impediments to the exercise of power. A "law of nature" is a precept of reason forbidding a man to do what is destructive of his own life. In the state of nature every man has a "right" to everything. Thus security comes only of the first fundamental law: "To seek peace and follow it," and "by all means we can to defend ourselves."