Hobbes calls this principle mutual accommodation or complaisance. He writes that once we have ourselves equal to everyone else that " men require for themselves that which would not be granted to others The Greeks call this pleonexia, that is, a desire for more than their share"(Chapter XV, paragraph 22). However, " the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present, without the acquisition of more"(Chapter XI, paragraph 2). According to Hobbes, "When we have more than everyone else, then we still want that feeling of a challenge and, " men are continually in competition for honour and dignity-(Chapter XVII, paragraph 7). It is written in chapter 13 that, " the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself"(Chapter XIII, paragraph 1). As far as intelligence goes, " I will find a greater equality amongst men than that of strength"(Chapter XIII, paragraph 2). If all humans have equal chances to gain power, but also have equal chances of losing it. Therefore, if any two men desire the same thing, then we expect there to be some kind of dispute, since each man would have "equality in the attaining of [their] ends"(Chapter XIII, paragraph 3). .
In a society with a government, Hobbes theorizes, humans would behave themselves for fear of consequences from authority figures in the government. With the absence of government, however, "during the time men live without a common power to keep them in awe, they are in that condition called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man"(Chapter XIII, paragraph 8). He writes that life in a world like this would not contain culture, art, knowledge of the earth, letters, society, etc This war of all with all leaves humans with a " continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"(Chapter XIII, paragraph 9).
