As for the passions of hate, lust, ambition, and covetousness, what crimes they are apt to produce, is so obvious to every man’s experience and understanding, as there needeth nothing to be said of them, saving that they are infirmities, so annexed to the nature, both of man and all other living creatures, as that their effects cannot be hindered but by extraordinary use of reason, or a constant severity in punishing them. For in those things men hate, they find a continual and unavoidable molestation; whereby either a man’s patience must be everlasting, or he must be eased by removing the power of that which molesteth him. The former is difficult; the latter is many times impossible, without some violation of the law. Ambition and covetousness are passions also that are perpetually incumbent and pressing; whereas reason is not perpetually present to resist them: and therefore whensoever the hope of impunity appears, their effects proceed. And for lust, what it wants in the lasting, it hath in the vehemence, which sufficeth to weigh down the apprehension of all easy or uncertain punishments.
Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws, is fear. Nay, excepting some generous natures, it is the only thing, when there is apparence of profit or pleasure by breaking the laws, that makes men keep them. And yet in many cases a crime may be committed through fear.
For not every fear justifies the action it produceth, but the fear only of corporeal hurt, which we call “bodily fear,” and from which a man cannot see how to be delivered but by the action. A man is assaulted, fears present death, from which he sees not how to escape but by wounding him that assaulteth him: if he wound him to death, this is no crime, because no man is supposed at the making of a commonwealth to have abandoned the defence of his life or limbs, where the law cannot