<P> Although it may be natural to assume that Locke was responding to Hobbes, Locke never refers to Hobbes by name, and may instead have been responding to other writers of the day, like Robert Filmer . In fact, Locke's First Treatise is entirely a response to Filmer's Patriarcha, and takes a step by step method to refuting Filmer's theory set out in Patriarcha . The conservative party at the time had rallied behind Filmer's Patriarcha, whereas the Whigs, scared of another prosecution of Anglicans and Protestants, rallied behind the theory set out by Locke in his Two Treatises of Government as it gave a clear theory as to why the people would be justified in overthrowing a monarchy which abuses the trust they had placed in it . </P> <P> Montesquieu makes use of the concept of the state of nature in his The Spirit of the Laws, first printed in 1748 . Montesquieu interestingly states the thought process behind early human beings before the formation of society . He says that human beings would have the faculty of knowing and would first think to preserve their life in the state . Human beings would also at first feel themselves to be impotent and weak . As a result, humans would not be likely to attack each other in this state . Next, humans would seek nourishment and out of fear and impulse would eventually unite to create society . Once society was created, a state of war would ensue amongst societies which would have been all created the same way . The purpose of war is the preservation of the society and the self . The formation of law within society is the reflection and application of reason for Montesquieu . </P> <P> Hobbes' view was challenged in the eighteenth century by Jean - Jacques Rousseau, who claimed that Hobbes was taking socialized people and simply imagining them living outside of the society in which they were raised . He affirmed instead that people were neither good nor bad, but were born as a blank slate, and later society and the environment influence which way we lean . In Rousseau's state of nature, people did not know each other enough to come into serious conflict and they did have normal values . The modern society, and the ownership it entails, is blamed for the disruption of the state of nature which Rousseau sees as true freedom . </P> <P> David Hume offers in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) that human beings are naturally social: "' Tis utterly impossible for men to remain any considerable time in that savage condition, which precedes society; but that his very first state and situation may justly be esteem'd social . This, however, hinders not, but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the suppos'd state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never cou'd have any reality ." </P>

What is the natural state of man according to rousseau
find me the text answering this question