what might humans have been like in a State of Nature, when all they had was their humanity? Each of these authors populated the State of Nature with what they took to be the simplest societies known in the Western Hemisphere, and thus they concluded that the original state of humanity was one of freedom and equality, for better or worse (Hobbes, for example, definitely felt it was worse). It’s important to stop here for a moment and consider why they came to this verdict – because it was by no means an obvious or inevitable conclusion.
