The surface of the earth is originally covered by dense forest, and inhabited by animals of every species.  Men, scattered among them, imitate their industry, and so rise to the instinct of the brutes, with this advantage that while each species has only its own, man, without anything special, appropriates the instincts of all.  This admirable creature, with foes on every side, is forced to be constantly on the alert, and hence to be always in full possession of all his faculties, unlike civilised man, whose native force is enfeebled by the mechanical protections with which he has surrounded himself.  He is not afraid of the wild beasts around him, for experience has taught him that he is their master.  His health is better than ours, for we live in a time when excess of idleness in some, excess of toil in others, the heating and over-abundant diet of the rich, the bad food of the poor, the orgies and excesses of every kind, the immoderate transport of every passion, the fatigue and strain of spirit,—­when all these things have inflicted more disorders upon us than the vaunted art of medicine has been able to keep pace with.  Even if the sick savage has only nature to hope from, on the other hand he has only his own malady to be afraid of.  He has no fear of death, for no animal can know what death is, and the knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first of man’s terrible acquisitions after abandoning his animal condition.[181] In other respects, such as protection against weather, such as habitation, such as food, the savage’s natural power of adaptation, and the fact that his demands are moderate in proportion to his means of satisfying them, forbid us to consider him physically unhappy.  Let us turn to the intellectual and moral side.

If you contend that men were miserable, degraded, and outcast during these primitive centuries because the intelligence was dormant, then do not forget, first, that you are drawing an indictment against nature,—­no trifling blasphemy in those days—­and second, that you are attributing misery to a free creature with tranquil spirit and healthy body, and that must surely be a singular abuse of the term.  We see around us scarcely any but people who complain of the burden of their lives; but who ever heard of a savage in full enjoyment of his liberty ever dreaming of complaint about his life or of self-destruction?

With reference to virtues and vices in a state of nature, Hobbes is wrong in declaring that man in this state is vicious, as not knowing virtue.  He is not vicious, for the reason that he does not know what being good is.  It is not development of enlightenment nor the restrictions of law, but the calm of the passions and ignorance of vice, which keep them from doing ill. Tanto plus in illis profitcit vitiorum ignoratio, quam in his cognitio virtutis.