1. What it is we call the law of nature, is not agreed upon by those, that have hitherto written. For the most part, such writers as have occasion to affirm, that anything is against the law of nature, do allege no more than this, that it is against the consent of all nations, or the wisest and most civil nations. But it is not agreed upon, who shall judge which nations are the wisest. Others make that against the law of nature, which is contrary to the consent of all mankind; which definition cannot be allowed, because then no man could offend against the law of nature; for the nature of every man is contained under the nature of mankind. But forasmuch as all men are carried away by the violence of their passion, and by evil customs do those things which are commonly said to be against the law of nature; it is not the consent of passions, or consent in some error gotten by custom, that makes the law of nature. Reason is no less of the nature of man than passion, and is the same in all men, because all men agree in the will to be directed and governed in the way to that which they desire to attain, namely, their own good, which is the work of reason: there can therefore be no other law of nature than reason, nor no other precepts of _natural law_, than those which declare unto us the ways of peace, where the same may be obtained, and of defence where it may not. [Sidenote: That every man divest himself of the right he hath to all things, is one precept of nature.] 2. One precept of the law of nature therefore is this, _that every man divest himself of the right he hath to all things by nature_. For when divers men having right not only to all things else, but to one another’s persons, if they use the same, there ariseth thereby invasion on the one part, and resistance on the other, which is _war_, and therefore contrary to the law of nature, the sum whereof consisteth in making peace. [Sidenote: What it is to relinquish and transfer one’s right.]