Nevertheless, no one can doubt that it is much better for us to live according to the laws and assured dictates of reason, for, as we said, they have men's true good for their object. Moreover, every one wishes to live as far as possible securely beyond the reach of fear, and this would be quite impossible so long as every one did everything he liked, and reason's claim was lowered to a par with those of hatred and anger. There is no one who is not ill at ease in the midst of enmity, hatred, anger and deceit, and who does not seek to avoid them as much as he can. When we reflect that men without mutual help, or the aid of reason, must needs live most miserably, ... we shall plainly see that men must necessarily come to an agreement to live together as securely and well as possible if they are to enjoy, as a whole, the rights which naturally belong to them as individuals, and their life should be no more conditioned by the force and desire of individuals, but by the power and will of the whole body. This end they will be unable to attain if desire be their only guide, for by the laws of desire each man is drawn in a different direction; they must, therefore, most firmly decree and establish that they will be guided in everything by reason, which nobody will dare openly to repudiate lest he should be taken for a madman, and will restrain any desire which is injurious to a man's fellows, that they will do to all as they would be done by, and that they will defend their neighbor's rights as their own. How such a compact as this should be entered into, how ratified and established, we will now inquire. Now it is a universal law of human nature that no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good, or from the fear of a greater evil; nor does any one endure an evil except for the sake of avoiding a greater evil, or gaining a greater good. That is, every one will, of two goods, choose that which he thinks the greatest; and, of two evils that which he thinks the least. I say advisedly that which he thinks the greatest or the least, for it does not necessarily follow that he judges right. This law is so deeply implanted in the human mind that it ought to be counted among eternal truths and axioms.