The intrinsic motion of matter has given origin to the diversity of the inorganic and organic world. Life is thus a product of matter and motion, and the human soul is a composite of very subtle atoms. Hobbes does not deny the existence of God, but he is decidedly opposed to any positive revealed religion, including Christianity. Even the moral life does not exceed the limits of matter and of motion. Sensations, passing to the heart, generate pleasure and hate, that is, inclinations and repulsions.
Men naturally tend to pleasure considered as a form of self-satisfaction.
But such a tendency must be rationalized by calculation, in order that it may bring greater pleasure. This is possible only in the state. The civil state, that is, the result of the passage of primitive man from the state of nature to a social life, derives from a contract the purpose of which is to procure the greatest possible pleasure, a pleasure which could not be had in the state of nature. This contract having been made, authority came into being in the person of the sovereign, who had not ceded his natural rights. The members of the state, then, have given up their rights in favor of the ruler, while the ruler alone still enjoys the same unlimited and absolute power which belonged to all men in their primitive condition.