In an analogy reminiscent of Newton’s first law of motion, which says matter will behave in a uniform way unless acted upon, Hobbes believes the natural state of man is one of war and strife, unless acted upon and governed by the rules of social living. Only a covenant kept by the rule of the sword can keep man from falling back into his natural state. Without the covenant, Hobbes tells us, society would disintegrate and it would be ‘a war of every man, against every man’ and the result would inevitably be that the life of man would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.
