In the state of natural war, the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place, there being no law; and there is no law, because there is no common power.  Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.  Justice is no faculty of body and mind like sense and passion, but only a quality relating to men in society.  Then adding a last touch to the description of the state of nature,—­by saying of property, that ’only that is every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it,’—­he opens up, at the close of the chapter, a new prospect by allowing a possibility to come out of so evil a condition.  The possibility consists partly in the passions that incline to peace—­viz., fear of death, desire of things necessary to commodious living, and hope by industry to obtain them; partly in reason, which suggests convenient articles of peace and agreement, otherwise called the Laws of Nature.

The first and second Natural Laws, and the subject of contracts, take up Chap.  XIV.  First comes a definition of Jus Naturale or Right of Nature—­the liberty each man has of using his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature or life.  Liberty properly means the absence of external impediments; now a man may externally be hindered from doing all he would, but not from using what power is left him, according to his best reason and judgment.  A Law of Nature, lex naturalis is defined, a general rule, found out by reason, forbidding a man to do what directly or indirectly is destructive of his life, or to omit what he thinks may best preserve it.  Right and Law, though generally confounded, are exactly opposed, Right being liberty, and Law obligation.

In the natural state of war, every man, being governed by his own reason, has a right to everything, even to another’s body.  But because thus no man’s life is secure, he finds the First and fundamental law of nature, or general rule of reason, to be to seek peace and follow it, if possible:  failing which, we may defend ourselves by all the means we can.  Here the law being ‘to endeavour peace,’ from this follows the Second law, that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and self-defence 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.  This is the same as the Gospel precept, Do to others, &c.

Laying down one’s right to anything is divesting one’s self of the liberty of hindering another in the exercise of his own original right to the same.  The right is renounced, when a man cares not for whose benefit; transferred, when intended to benefit some certain person or persons.  In either case the man is obliged or bound not to hinder those, in whose favour the right is abandoned, from the benefit of it; it is his duty