Today, we do not find Hobbes anywhere near as objectionable as his contemporaries did–because, for the most part, we actually live by many of the precepts he devised. We recognise now that men are indeed activated by fear or pride and we acknowledge moreover that both are equally dangerous. Above all we get by in societies where the often anonymous state is there to guard against the crude selfishness of human nature.43 Machiavelli’s pessimism, extrapolated by Hobbes’, has lasted too long and too well to be entirely misplaced.
