eign authority, because of their independency, are
in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators:
having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another;
that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their
kingdoms; and continual spies upon their neighbours; which is a posture
of war. But, because they uphold thereby the industry of their
subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies
the liberty of particular men.

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent,
that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice
and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power,
there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in
war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the
faculties, neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be
in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and
passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in
solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be
no propriety, no dominion, no _mine_ and _thine_ distinct; but only
that to be every man's, that he can get; and for so long as he can keep
it. And thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is
actually placed in: though with a possibility to come out of it,
consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.

(_Leviathan_.)

{24}

JOHN EARLE 1601?-1665

CHARACTER OF A PLODDING STUDENT

_A Plodding Student_ is a kind of alchemist or persecutor of Nature,
that would change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with
success many times as unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost,
to wit, of his own oil and candles. He has a strange forced appetite
to learning, and to achieve it brings nothing but patience and a body.
His study is not great, but continual, and consists much in the sitting
up till after midnight in a rug gown and a nightcap, to the vanquishing
perhaps of some six lines: yet what he has, he has perfect, for he
reads it so long to understand it, till he gets it without book. He
may with much industry make a breach into logic, and arrive at some
ability in an argument; but for politer studies, he dare not skirmish
with them, and for poetry, accounts it impregnable. His invention is
no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings
there; and his dispos