GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOCIETY. ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 47$
psychology which presupposes that self-interest is the only
motive for conduct. I have also indicated the bearing of
this psychology upon ethical theory; good, on Hobbes's
view, becomes that which a man happens to desire, while
virtue is success in maintaining and asserting the self. I
mentioned also Spinoza's agreement with this egoistic
psychology, and his distinctive view that all organisms
strive to intensify their existence and to enhance the full-
ness of their being, irrespective of the wishes or feelings
of others. Finally, I indicated the support which a purely
egoistic theory of ethics derives from the doctrine of
evolution, which postulates the struggle for survival as the
fundamental law of man's being. Psychological and ethical
theories of this type will, it is obvious, have important
political implications, and Hobbes's political theory shows
us, perhaps more clearly than any other, what these
implications are.
A being guided only by self-interest will naturally prey
upon his fellows in pursuit of his natural satisfactions.
Hobbes, therefore, depicts the initial condition of man
as that of a creature living in a state of nature conceived
broadly on the lines laid down by Glaucon in the Republic.*
In the state of nature men were, Hobbes holds, in constant
conflict. Each man's hand was against his fellow's, and,
since men are by nature equal, no man was weak enough
not to be an object of fear to his neighbours, or strong
enough to be immune from the fear which his neighbours
inspired. In a state of nature so conceived, there was no
property, law, justice or right, and the life of man, in
Hobbes's classic phrase, was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short". To put an end to such an intolerable state
of affairs, men formed society. Society was thus found
to be necessary because of man's naturally egoistic and
amoral disposition, and its purpose was to give him
security,
Hobbes also cites a further factor which plays its part
in the establishment of society, a factor which derives
1 Chapter I, pp. 20-22*