nd the growing influence of scientific thought.
Hobbes considered his philosophy a practical study of two kinds of bodies, one natural and the other civil. The civil body, which Hobbes called the commonwealth, was made by agreement among individuals. Natural bodies included everything else for which a rational knowledge existed to explain what caused them and how they functioned. However, Hobbes took a rather mechanistic view, perhaps as a result of GalileoÆs influence, and explained things in terms of the movement of bodies through space. He also considered human thought as an action of bodies. He believed that everyone was subject to physical and mathematical laws that allowed no exceptions.
In chapter 13 of Leviathan, Hobbes defined equality as a natural state of all people. He wrote that nature made all humans so equal that the variations and differences between them were too minuscule to be considered. Time and ingenuity leveled all differences in abilities. Inequality was a human perception, not a natural fact (Hobbes, 1968, p. 183). He beli
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