ise 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_ not to make void his own voluntary act, and if he
does, it is _injustice_ or _injury_, because he acts now _sine Jure_.
Such conduct Hobbes likens to an intellectual absurdity or
self-contradiction. Voluntary signs to be employed in abandoning a
right, are words and actions, separately or together; but in all bonds,
the strength comes not from their own nature, but from the fear of evil
resulting from their rupture.

He concludes that not all rights are alienable, for the reason that the
abandonment, being a voluntary act, must have for its object some good
to the person that abandons his right. A man, for instance, cannot lay
down the right to defend his life; to use words or other signs for that
purpose, would be to despoil himself of the end--security of life and
person--for which those signs were intended.

_Contract_ is the mutual transferring of right, and with this idea he
connects a great deal. First, he distinguishes transference of right to
a thing, and transference of the thing itself. A contract fulfilled by
one party, but left on trust to be fulfilled by the other, is called
the _Covenant_ of this other, (a distinction he afterwards drops), and
leaves room for the keeping or violation of faith. To contract he
opposes _gift, free-gift_, or _grace_, where there is no mutual
transference of right, but one party transfers in the hope of gaining
friendship or service from another, or the reputation of charity and
magnanimity, or deliverance from the merited pain of compassion, or
reward in heaven.

There follow remarks on signs of contract, as either express or by
inference, and a distinction between free-gift as made by words of the
present or past, and contract as made by words past, present, or
future; wherefore, in contracts like buying and selling, a promise
amounts to a covenant, and is obligatory.

The idea of _Merit_ is thus explained. Of two contracting parties, the
one that has first performed merits what he is to receive by the
other's performance, or has it as _due_. Even the person that wins a
prize, offered by free-gift to many, merits it. But, whereas, in
contract, I m