ABSTRACT
MAN, as the last and supreme minister, to whose needs and interests almost everything serves, keeps the proportion of most things too, and the greatest whale in the seas, they can scarcely escape his power […]. In this way the exact balance is kept, so that nothing, or useless, overflows. But man is subject to the same laws of nature, and I do not know by what force of nature, and to what law man is constrained in the first place. This, however, is certain, that the most contagious diseases are generally more abundant in the most populous places, and I do not know whether wars arise from natural law, where there is the greatest abundance of men. Generally, at least in one place, when the population is increased, harmony and abundance of things are diminished, envy and bitterness against neighbors seem to grow stronger. Such is the War of all against all!
