From LEVIATHAN
For warre consisteth not in Batell, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by Battel is sufficiently known; and therefore the notion of Time is to be considered in the nature of Warre: as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather lyeth not in a showre or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together; so the nature of Warre, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is Peace.
And though this may seem too subtle a deduction of the Lawes of Nature, to be taken notice of by all men: whereof the most part are too busie in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men inexcusable, they have been contracted into one easie sum, intelligible, even to the meanest capacity; and that is ‘Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thy selfe’.
The Lawes of Nature are Immutable and Eternal; for Injustice, Ingratitude, Arrogance, Pride, Iniquity, Acception of persons,and the rest, can never be made lawful. For it can never be that Warre shall preserve life, and Peace destroy it.
(A few disjointed extracts from ‘Leviathan’ by the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes [1588 -1679], a book which in my edition stretches to over 700, mostly unread, pages.
Once by chance seeing an opened book of Euclid, he studied the Proposition shown, and exclaimed, "By God, this is impossible!" Then he turned the pages back and found each Proposition was proved by the former, until he reached the self-evident axioms at the book’s beginning. Then he realised that the whole was a strictly logical construct, founded on those few axioms.
This possibly legendary story is meant to explain his method of demonstrating the truth of a complex and unlikely philosophical proposition by basing it on propositions which were obviously true. It was a way to get results which were certain.
Applying this to man, he gradually built up a system of government and sovereignty, his axioms being what he called Natural Laws, concerning Justice, Liberty, Rights and so on, all carefully defined. His great concern was for peace which for him meant an absence of civil war,
He had enviable mental powers, even writing an autobiography in Latin when aged 84; followed by a translation of the Odyssey and Iliad! All this as well as many publications on geometrical and mathematical problems, (including squaring the circle) which were attacked by his better trained contemporaries.
He knew the great men of his time including Bacon, Descartes and Galileo.He shaved his beard to avoid the appearance of a typical venerable philosopher, loved playing tennis and was a vegetarian for the last 20 years of his illustrious life)