ry man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may
and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying
one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage;
and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them,
but love of himself, and the profit they bring him: for if it be asked,
what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the
violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can
scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death only
to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there
must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security:
but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such
circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is
right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or
injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently
the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of
nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one,
should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain
all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made
licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that
they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or
foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

Sect. 94. But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's
understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive,
that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil
society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against
any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in
the state of nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to
take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security in
civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only
they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall
be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this
discourse) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency
amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as
to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of
their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without
any other